When People are Different
When People Are Different
I have been incarcerated for 21 years. During that time I have witnessed so many wrongs directed at people different from myself. At times I, myself, have been guilty of committing those wrongs. I was just too blinded by my own desire to be accepted to see it. I thought at the time that I was right in the wrong that I did because those people were different from me. Then one day reality hit me. They weren’t different; we were the same. HUMAN. I still couldn’t figure it out. Now I know we are all human, we just like different things. We shouldn’t be punished for it.
At one point in my life I hated people that were gay. I didn’t see anything wrong with it because it was the popular thing to do in the culture that I grew up in. While hating gays I couldn’t understand why whites hated me so much. I hadn’t done anything to them. I felt as though that was very stupid. How could you hate someone because of the color of their skin? That, in turn, made me hate them. By me hating them, it made me lash out at them. I lashed out because I didn’t know what to do. It really made me hate them. I hated them for a reason. Then it dawned on me I was just like them. I hated gays just because they were gay. They hadn’t done anything to me. I just hated them to hate them.
After that realization, the scariest thought in my life invaded my mind. Black men will one day be extinct. We are being attacked in so many ways. Black men, please wake up and realize what is going on with you!
As black men we are being killed at an alarming rate by while police officers who are never charged with a crime and are often called heroes for these killings. We are being killed by white civilians for the smallest transgressions. But the worst part of the situation is we are killing each other at a hyper-alarming rate for no reason at all.
The same reasons we kill each other for, kids laugh about. How can you kill someone and say it was a matter of pride or principle? You can’t apologize and walk away before the situation gets out of hand. Please look into yourself and see if you can de-escalate the situation before it becomes a situation.
We as a race of people have to understand that black lives matter at all times! Not just when a white police officer is the taker of that LIFE. In other words, when blacks take black lives, it matters. So please do your part to stop the baseless hate, senseless killings, and our imminent extinction.
