All tagged Black Lives Matter
As I watched two presidential candidates outline their vision for America in one of the most hyped debates in history, after a week of unrest in Charlotte and deep pain in Tulsa following the deaths of two more black men, Keith Lamont Scott and Terrence Crutcher, at the hands of police officers, I confronted the reality that our future may be even dimmer than our past.
We’ve followed your rules and played by your system, even though it disproportionately penalizes us. We’ve put our hands up. We’ve run. We’ve pleaded with you to breathe, and you’ve still let us die. We’ve tried to gain access to what you said was our American Dream, and it has failed us.
Unlike white millennials, we aren’t allowed to deviate from norms, to be untraditional. We have to follow strict standards and conventions. We have to be acceptable and respectable. We can’t have nuanced views and ideology, and if we have the nerve, the audacity to be angry, we better have something to show for it.