Stop Shooting My Little Brother

This country has gone through a lot in regards to race relations in the past oh fifty years. It’s always jarring realizing the Civil Rights Movement was not that long ago and that progress albeit progress has not been anywhere near what MLK envisioned. Sure, little black boys can hold hands with little white girls, if the black boy is seemingly nonthreatening and wearing a suit.

All of our notions about race are just so systematically ingrained in legislation, in media, in bigoted ideas passed down from ignorant generation to the next it’s hard to see a future where none of that exists. 

The mistreatment of people of color is forever torched into American history with a flame that has extinguished hope, burned an unrelenting inferiority complex into millions and laid waste to humanity in a way that is almost irreparable. 

American Slavery is a big deal. It was more than humans being stripped of basic rights, it was more than families living in constant fear of being ripped apart, it was more than slaves being whipped and beaten by slave masters on a whim, it was more than the human spirit being tortured to the point of suicide, it was more than every violent action done to a person you can think of, it was more than dismantling the laws of human nature. Slavery ruined- no, poisoned the hearts and minds of this county and its ramifications continued to haunt our present in ways nobody wants to admit.

During the Civil Rights movement there seemed to be a special place of hatred and violence singularly preserved for black men. They were the main enemy in the minds of millions of Americans because of the mere color of their skin.Their presence was a threat and their lives an afterthought. 

Skin color was (in some minds still is whether it’s admitted or not) equated to intellect, reasoning, responsibility, the capacity for love and understanding. In slavery black people were not allowed to be perceived as human, holding all of these qualities, along with an astounding magnitude of hope, because then the reality that humans were being treated as cattle would settle in and demolish the whole notion of free, renewable resources (HUMANS). 

Again, I talk about slavery because for me that, later to be repackaged as institutional racism, can be the only source of all the unapologetic violence constantly berating the black community for so many years. We have come from an incomprehensible amount of pain and broken spirits to get to where we are today. I am apart of a community that is bigger than me, that holds a diverse array of minds. I am apart of a community that has been and continues to be subjected to atrocious mistreatment and injustice over and over again.

It scares me that black boys are continuously getting shot or beaten with no hope for justice. It scares me that the system that is suppose to protect the lives of all Americans has been so lax with defending the rights of some. It’s even more frustrating that the justice system ignores the harrowing implications of these injustices.

More importantly, it scares me that I have a little brother in Florida who just wants to hang out and be a teenager, but can’t be because being a black teenage boy in Florida can get you killed.

My little brother is tall for his age. He’s lanky and goofy and is one of the funniest people I know. I love talking to him because he has this airy demeanor of wisdom sometimes or this refreshing, wide-eyed infectious curiosity. He asks me questions about life and listens to my clumsy answers with a furrowed brow and at those moments I feel humbled that he actually sits there and listens. We talk about his dreams of becoming the next Dwayne Wade, but I always tell him he could be the next Neil Degrasse Tyson. I love my little brother. I love him so much it makes me want to cry when I hear about these shootings. And I do. I have. I’m crying as I write this. I honestly don’t know what I would do or how I would react if anything happened to him. It makes me crazy even thinking about it.

It makes me physically ill knowing families have lost pieces of themselves because of unfathomable hatred. It makes me angry that there is nothing I can do to quell the rage or sadness the families must feel.

This has got to stop.

Plain and simple.

There is no excuse for this blatant disregard for human life. I don’t feel safe in this country knowing guns are in the hands of maniacs and guilty people get away with murder. 

This is definitely a gun issue, but even more seriously it’s a human rights issue.

It’s time to start protesting. It’s time to start taking action. We cannot keep living like this.

Open Letter To African American Kids... er, Black Kids.

Dear Black Kids,

I’m going to follow this irritating trend I’ve been seeing with celebrities writing these boring open letters about vapid, stupid things like Miley Cyrus’s future/well-being. I want to write a letter to African American kids argh, people of slave decent that live in this country and anyone of color really who is constantly subjected to prejudicial standards, constantly told they are to be a certain way or suffer the dire consequences of being ostracized and ridiculed. You are not alone.

Let me tell you an anecdotal tale of ignorance that has stuck with me for years. Don’t worry it’s not in the bad way where I think about it every night before I go to bed, tearful and broken down, begging for some kind of solace in solitude. I don’t rock back and forth in the dark praying for this experience to disappear from my brain matter forever. It actually makes me kind of sad and a little bit angry, which does nothing but drive me to be as me as possible.

It was a late night after dance class. My friend’s mom picked us up and we could barely contain our excitement in the back seat of the car for we were on our way to see the SpiceWorld. We excitedly chatted in the back about our favorite spice girls (Scary was mine and Sporty was hers - the best two if you ask me). Mid-conversation her mother turned around and said to me, “You speak so well. You sound just like a white girl.” I was stunned. My ten-year old self knew what she was saying sounded inherently wrong because I didn’t understand what “speaking white” meant let alone the fact she was insinuating black people were not allowed to speak a certain way. Now, let me clear something else up since we’re on the topic of vernacular. This is another lesson I had to learn thanks to mainstream media and a heap of other prejudices I embarrassingly collected, unknowingly, over the years. The way you speak does not define you. This is maybe one of the most important lessons that are never taught. It doesn’t matter what words you use to express yourself they are not in direct correlation with intellect, compassion, empathy, passion, etc. How you speak is merely something taught. No one should feel they need to speak a certain way to fit in or be comfortable in this country. People DO need to heed their personal issues with race and language and not be judgey assholes like I once was and I’m not going to lie, sometimes, still am. I try to check myself as often as possible to remind myself not to fall into the man-eating trap of racism and stereotyping. Anyway, that comment was the first of many I would endure over the course of eight years from middle school all the way through high school.

This letter is for those black kids who were/are called “white” because of how they speak, dress, the music they listen to, the movies they like. This letter is for the black kids who want to break out of these ridiculous stereotypes and represent themselves instead of an ideal perpetuated and almost mandated by this now secretly racist society. Don’t be daft. Racism has not ceased to exist because there is a black president, au contraire it has become more clandestine, more cunning and exposes itself oh so subtlety in the underrepresented models of color, in the exoticized black character in sitcoms and dramas, in the “she/he looks good for a black woman/man” comments among scores of others.

This letter is for those black kids who so desperately want to be something more than their skin color. It’s for those kids who will never forget where they came from but are ready to move forward to where they want to be. This letter is to explain that there is no one in this world who is allowed to tell you who you are except for you. This letter is a plea to society to back the hell up off these racial constructs that have done nothing but harm and divide a nation that is in need of major healing.

A lot has changed since I was a kid. This whole “natural hair phenomenon” alone is enough to make my head spin. It’s fantastic! However, it is a baby step in the right direction. Tyler Perry movies still exist so movement will always be a bit stunted, in my opinion. The rage he incites in me is unparalleled. I digress.

In conclusion, be you. You are beautiful no matter what they say. Yes, I just used a Christina Aguilera lyric, but it is true. No matter what anyone says you are beautiful. You just have to believe it. No one can have any power over you unless you let them. Ok, yeah, that was Eleanor Roosevelt. Again, it’s true. No one is allowed to tell you who you are.

I will close this letter with a quote from the late Amiri Baraka,

“There’s no intrinsic value of being black; there’s no intrinsic value of being white. It’s a fake concept, but certainly I’ve…been oppressed by it all my life.”

Don’t let these concepts oppress you.

Love from the moon and back again,

Christina

Black History Month

I hate it. It’s one month out of the year of the utter most condescension and is, seemingly, this passive aggressive government mandate that does little, if nothing, to better race relations, and help people understand the history of a people who have been treated less than human, to put it lightly, and have been are subjected to ongoing, systemic racism.

To give one month out of the year to a group of people whose ancestors  (my great-great-great grandmother worked on a plantation) basically built this country with literal blood, sweat and tears is not only infuriating but blatantly insulting. Maybe the initial Black History Month back in the 1920s- where it started out as a week- was necessary and possibly helped people cope with the past better (this is a stretch… is there a word for “greater than a stretch?”). That and Jim Crow laws. It’s hard not to be sarcastic when dealing with this subject. I mean, c'monnnn. When will there be a conference about how important it is to integrate Black History month into the school year? 

Also, February is the shortest month of the year which has been argued countless times as an overtly offensive act. Obviously Black History Month is not for black people, because we know our history, or at least I hope most of us do, so this month is to educate people outside of that realm, but very gingerly, omitting unpleasant (real) details about slavery and ongoing discrimination and atrocious physical and mental mistreatment. Nowadays Black History Month focuses on the Civil Rights movement, like black people didn’t exist before then. I mean, there have been some lesson plans on Harriet Tubman, Fredrick Doulass, and that peanut butter dude, but as far as I can remember there was just a brief mention of the fact they were slaves.

On a different note, I’ve been long-meaning to write an essay about how slavery is taught in high school. I distinctly remember sitting in one of my history classes, completely baffled and thoroughly irritated as the teacher espoused this embarrassingly inappropriate rhetoric about how some slaves LIKED being slaves and how some were treated “better” than what we might be led to believe. If only I wasn’t a quiet, mousy teenager who feared the judgmental eyes of my peers, I would have retorted with the obvious response: “They were all still owned by other humans. This is a wildly irresponsible discussion to have at this point, considering we haven’t gone over the actual conduct of slave traders and masters. Families were torn apart. Spirits were broken through physical and mental torture. There were books on how to ‘break your slave.’ Teacher, you’re an asshole.” However, I kept my mouth shut and was silently seething in my seat, sure people could see steam shooting out of my ears. 

Anyway, during this month I can remember three people who were kept in rotation every year, which was not necessarily a bad thing, but it held the class back from learning other predominant or maybe not so predominate black figures. Hearing about MLK for ten years and hearing nothing about Phillis Wheatley or Linda Brent Harriet Anne Jacobs, two former slaves that transcended societal restrictions to publish works about their experiences in captivity. Reading their narratives inspired me not only as a black woman, but as a writer and no one will ever hear of them unless they research or take specific classes illuminating their integral presence in history.

What do you think about Black History month? 

I shall end this with a quote from a brilliant, noteworthy black man with the gosh-darn best narrating voice the world has ever heard.

“I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history.”

-Morgan Freeman