Be Strong Black Man Don’t Cry
by VE
Heard/Arlington County Detention Center/OAR writing contest, August 2020
Be strong Black man don’t cry. So I’m forced to wear this mask and mask my pain. How much more can I take when it seems as if every other day I along with the rest of the world watches yet another unarmed Black man die at the hands of law enforcement.
While deep down inside I feel ostracized, unloved, unwanted, affraid and perplexed. As a Black man in America it seems as if I don’t even have the right to be vexed, they’ll be quick to say there goes another angry Black man behaving savagely.
Society puts obstacles in the way of Black people such as police brutality, job discrimination, discriminatory practices which inhibits us from acquiring home loans and business loans in our desperate attempt to acquiring financial freedom, slavery, lynchings, voter discrimination, redlining, food deserts in our neighborhoods depriving us of fresh produce, healthy and nutritional foods as we suffer the aftermath of the disparities such as high blood pressure, diabetes, weak immune systems, clogged arteries, heart disease, strokes, matriculating into the corona virus ravishing through the Black community with fatality rates as high as 75% to 80% within the Black community.
Though we make up minute minority of the United States at only 13% society puts all these obsticals in the way of Black People then turn around and criticize us when we don’t rise above it.
When Trump said “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” That broke my already severed heart. But then again who am I kidding he was only perpetuating his deeminor and rhetoric fueled with violence, hate, racism and discrimination that we as the American body have endured throughout his presidency for the past three and a half years.
On the other hand concerning the mass protests that have been proliferated throughout the United States and eighteen other foriegn countries and counting.
As the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. I am overcome with a sense of hope seeing thousands of our Caucasian, Hispanic, and Asian Brothers and Sisters Standing in Solidarity with us. Thank you for finally being empathetic to our pain, trauma, and grief.
God intended for us to be alleys to each other not enemies. God created the human race with 46 chromosomes with 23 dominant and recessive allelies not Black, White, Hispanic, or Asian race. God said in Malachi 2 verse 10 “Have we all not one Father?” “Has not one God created us?” “Why do we deal treacherously with one another?” “By profaning the covenant of the Fathers.”
Studies have proven that since 2014 over one thousand Black men and women are killed consecutively each year at the hands of law enforcement. Studies have also proven that one in every one thousand Black men and women are subjected to die at the hands of law enforcement each year for the past six years since 2014.
They say slavery has been abolished but yet they still use the hanous tactics that were used on our enslaved ancestors only 155 years ago on us till this day.
It is 2020 but approximately six Black men have been lynced in California, Texas, and New York. What’s even more disturbing is that their deaths were ruled as a suicide with no foul play.
I can in no way phathom that any Black man would commit suicide by hanging themselves on a tree knowing the history of Black people being lynched in the United States.
When I was a boy in my country Cameroon West Africa I dreamed of living the American dream only to come to America and continuously watch this dream have the propentency to be shattered, dragged off and washed away everytime that I see another unarmed Black man’s lifeless body be driven off the scene DOA, DNR, dead on arrival, do not resistate and watch his blood be washed away as I watch the American Dream that was never intended to be mine or anyone who looks like me.
At that very moment symbolically and metaphorically the American Dream be washed away with our blood on these streets.
Be strong Black man don’t cry.
I’m a strong Black man but sometimes theirs nothing left for me to do but cry.
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