To Be Black in America

Personally, all I can do is imagine what it’s like to be a Black person in America. I will never know how it feels for my ancestors to have been slaves just like I will never now how it feels to hear from my relatives about what the struggle for civil rights was like in the midst of the 20th century. For so long the Black man has been the victim in this country but he is always treated as the prime suspect. The fact is, being Black in America is a marked category that has Black people being wary of the police, Black women being cautious of Black men, and even Black men being evasive of other Black men.

In response to the Black Lives Matter movement, critics have come out to say that all lives matter and tried to shed blame on Black people for isolating themselves. It is obvious that all lives matter, it’s the Black lives that need to do some convincing, particularly when it comes to the government and the subject of police brutality. Just last year, young Black men killed by police was at its highest rate yet and the same young Black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed. The fact that Black people are the subject of police brutality should not come as a shock to anyone. Through the years America has been a witness to the Rodney Kings, the Eric Garners, the Korryn Gaines, and so on. The Black lives matter movement is a call to action not just for the US, but for the world and it’s not asking for a reparation of the harms that have been done to Black people and their communities, it’s asking for a recognition and a halt to those harms.

While Black people throughout the country are wary of the police and their antics, Black people are also living with the potential violence from other Black people in their very own communities. It isn’t that Blacks have the outrageous craving to do harm to other Black people, it’s the problem of oppressive societies having internal violence and nothing being done to change it. The cycle of going from the school system straight into the prison system is a common dilemma which Black people find themselves incapable of escaping. Another problem is the cycle of domestic violence, which teaches young males to be future perpetrators while young women are taught to be future victims. One additional epidemic is that of Black on Black violence, whether it is due to gang affiliation or simple petty crime. The large list of problems that exist within our society is the product of structural racism, where in this case everything works against the poor Black communities.

Being an American is something to be proud of, but for far too many Black people, the pride will never be there as long as the violence against them is perpetuated. Their predicament is not the harm that is done to them, their predicament is simply being Black in America.