By Jarrett Paul
I am who I am. I am a young Black adult in America. I did not choose to be Black. I did not ask to be Black. I am Black and that’s my superpower. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’d still choose to be Black regardless of the circumstances. Because being Black means living unapologetically. It means having a heart so pure that the hardships of our history cannot harden our hearts. Black is beautiful.
Being young and Black in America also means you have to listen to your parents tell you how to react if you ever have an encounter with police because they don’t want the wrong gesture causing their child to not come home. It means even though you’ve never had any trouble with the law you still feel uncomfortable when the police are around. Freddie Gray lost his life because he made eye contact with an officer.
It means your parents constantly tell you to cut your dreads or braids because they don’t want it to affect your image. Meanwhile, your hair is your individuality. It means watching the way you dress because you don’t want to be profiled as a “thug.”
It means people hold on tighter to their belongings when you walk by them in public. It means your older peers constantly get pulled over for having a nice car in a bad neighborhood. It means being watched when you go to the mall to shop with your friends. It means most of your peers you grew up around get lost in the streets. You have no control over the environment you are born and raised in. It means you can’t buy homes in certain neighborhoods, and you know exactly why. Yet gentrification can occur in your neighborhood and there’s nothing you can do about it.
We don’t want to keep seeing our people get murdered wrongfully with video evidence and no justice being served. We don’t want to keep creating new hashtags every time it’s a new victim. We just want to feel like our lives have value and meaning in this world. Because Black lives truly matter. And that doesn’t take away from the existence of all the other lives in this world. But our lives are being taken for granted right now. Equality doesn’t cause damage. Racism and oppression do.
It hurts seeing mothers hold their composure on TV and stand up for their children when you know they’re broken on the inside. It hurts seeing children lose their parents. It hurts seeing people who look like you lose those who are closest to their hearts. It hurts knowing that at any moment that could be you or your friends/family. It hurts knowing that for every case that makes the national news, there are many more that aren’t getting any attention. Those people deserve coverage, too.
It hurts hearing officers say they “fear for their life” during an encounter with an unarmed Black man. We are the ones who are scared. They have all of the weaponry, armor and the law by their side. We have nothing, not even our rights. It hurts seeing grown men beg for their life, only to watch them be killed on camera.
It hurt seeing Trayvon Martin lose his life when all he wanted to do was to go home that night to his parents. It hurt seeing Philando Castile lose his life in front of his girlfriend and daughter when all he tried to do was take his I.D out. What hurt more was seeing his 4-year-old daughter console her mother after watching her father get murdered. No child should have to go through that.
It hurt seeing Tamir Rice lose his young life before it even started. It hurt seeing Alton Sterling lose his life while trying his hardest to comply.
It hurt seeing Sandra Bland lose her life over a minor traffic violation. What hurt even more, was her mugshot. It hurt seeing Walter Scott get shot in his back while running away because he was scared. It hurt hearing about Breonna Taylor getting shot in her sleep. She went to bed that night expecting to wake up the next morning.
It hurt seeing Ahmaud Arbery lose his life while jogging. It hurt hearing Eric Garner say to officers “I can’t breathe” and lose his life anyway. It hurts even more that he said those words in 2014 and now it’s 2020 and those same words were spoken by George Floyd before he died. The phrase “I can’t breathe” will never be the same to me. It hurt seeing George Floyd cry out for his mom during the last seconds of his life.
What hurts, even more, is that I was 12 when Trayvon Martin lost his life, I’m 20 now and the change I expected to see has not happened. The deepest pain is the pain of knowing that the brothers and sisters that I mentioned did not receive justice because it means our lives have no worth to those officers.
Police officers need to put themselves in our shoes and think about how’d they feel if they encountered an officer after seeing their peers get murdered by one. No one wants to be another hashtag. No one wants to lose their life and leave their loved ones behind. We just want justice, change and equality. We just want our country, which prides itself on freedom and opportunity, to embrace us.
Keep love within your heart. Don’t let hate blind our vision and cause us to forget our essence as people. We are so much more than our circumstances. Our history does not define us, what our ancestors experienced does not define us. If anything, it molded us into strong people who can withstand anything that this world throws at us. We must continue to love. We must continue to have hope. Because one day this will change.
Jarrett Paul, a rising junior, is a free safety on Rutgers’ men’s football team, the Scarlet Knights. Paul is also a graduate of Paramus Catholic High School.
Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.
The Star-Ledger/NJ.com encourages submissions of opinion. Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow us on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and on Facebook at NJ.com Opinion. Get the latest news updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.com’s newsletters.
"Opinion" - Google News
June 29, 2020 at 12:14AM
https://ift.tt/3icENA8
It hurts | Opinion - NJ.com
"Opinion" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2FkSo6m
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment