Dear America
It is with a sad heart I write to you today. I am a black woman, wife and mother. Every single day of my life I fear my husband not coming home to us from a “misunderstanding” with the police. I fear my son being targeted because well according to you “he’s a threat to society.” Someone please explain to me how my 8 year old, naïve son is a threat. Oh! because he’s black right? The pain I carry as a black woman is heavy. Witnessing my fellow brothers and sisters slaughtered at the hands of those who are supposed to protect us and for no reason is disheartening and infuriating. Us black people are tired, we are exhausted, we are triggered by your hate for us. The fact that you care nothing about us is not okay, but we got us. To be murdered by those who are supposed to protect us is nothing new, we just have camera phones now. It’s crazy that it can be filmed and distributed for the world to see and yet NOTHING HAPPENS! NOTHING! Countless Black Americans, especially our black men have been murdered on camera for the world to see and the killers are still living their best lives, how sway? The emotional stress of being a black person in America is heavy!!
Black Men Matter, Black Men are Loved, I Support Black Men
Every single time I am stopped by the police, I feel this indescribable feeling inside of me and just start to shake. I try my hardest to not give them a reason to stop me though, knowing I could lose my life at a “routine stop.” My children can be left without their mom. My husband will have to go on without me. Or worst, my black son could be killed for being black in a car with his black mom. These are the things that go through my mind as I am just driving. When I was pulled over one morning for what I still do not know, but yea. When I was pulled over I performed protocol: I put my hands on the steering wheel in clear sight.. I tried so hard to keep the tears from rolling down my eyes because (1) I didn’t want my daughter to see me cry and (2) I didn’t want the officer to sense my fear. The officer was actually quite friendly and gave me a ticket for my child not being “properly restrained.” (She was in her car seat and all, but to speed things up and not let things get out of hand.) I took the ticket and went on my way. How many of us do this? Try to not make a big thing out of something we didn’t even do in fear of maybe being killed for “nothing.” I cried and prayed, and prayed and cried, because in my head my anxiety had taken over. There’s so many ways that scenario could have gone and my mind played out every single one. Most left me dead in my car with my daughter screaming. These are the thing us black people feel and think as we are just simply driving from one destination to the next. We can not rush when we are running late, we can’t slide through the yellow light, we can’t even just do the speed limit without thoughts of being pulled over and our lives ending.
Not only do I fear for my own life, but I fear for the life of my husband, son, daughter and every other black HUMAN walking this earth. It hurts to see this. I can no longer watch the videos of you killing us without cause. I couldn’t even watch When they see us on Netflix because it was too hard. And that was only a reenactment. So imagine watching in real time a man calling out for his mom, for help, saying he couldn’t breathe and all is ignored as he is being murdered for the world to see. What if that was my son, is the only question that popped into my head. How exactly am I supposed to prepare my son for that? I pray so hard for black people. I cover my family in love and God’s protection every day. None of us know what the day may bring, but it’s harder to walk in those shoes when you’re black. This is nothing new in America, it’s just being televised more frequently.
BUT YOU ALREADY KNEW THAT!
Check on your black friends, WE ARE NOT OKAY!
