The Police V.S. POC

On February 26,2012, every person of color watched in horror as a young African American boy lost his life; Not because he was a criminal and not even because he did anything wrong, Trayvon Martin died simply because he was a 16-year-old boy whose black hoodie and dark skin just screamed trouble to George Zimmerman. Protests and petitions rang out for this man to be convicted and once again, on July 13,2013, every person of color watched as this man went home free after a jury acquitted him. Every person of color watched that day that a young boy's life was proved to be insignificant in the eyes of the law simply because he was black. Months before the trial, the world witnessed the news criminalize this dead child's life as if he was still living and breathing to defend himself. The world watched and even made it okay to slander a child's name, just because he was black. This story was the first to make national news, and wasn't the last that ended in the same outcome. Hundreds, even thousands of lives were lost to the police because of the color of their skin and each time America proved just how little and unequal that persons of color really are in this world. Ta-Nehisi Coates in his feature in The Atlantic, "The Case for Reparations" states "Indeed, in America there is a strange and powerful belief that if you stab a black person ten times, the bleeding stops and the healing begins the moment the assailant drops the knife. We believe white dominance to be a fact of the inert past, a delinquent debt that can be made to disappear if only we look."

Since birth, people of color are preparing for a battle that no one can quite be prepared for. Even if you say the right things and do everything that the officer tells you to do, there is tell a possibility that you could make the wrong move at the wrong time and not only could that be a warning, that could be your life. Police officers instill in our heads that they fear us because we always act as if there is a threat, but officers are the real enemy. They raise their guns at us and shoot with no thought of whose mother, father, son, uncle, daughter, and even grandparent that they just took from this very earth. I cannot feel protected by men and women that take pride in killing people of color like they are at target practice. "Instead of feeling protected by police, many African Americans are intimidated and live in daily fear that their children will face abuse, arrest, and death at the hands of police officers who may be acting on implicit biases or institutional policies based on stereotypes and assumptions of black criminality." as stated in a letter released by Sociologists for Justice. These assumptions based off of skin color that just because they are black that they must be doing something wrong is what is completely wrong with this issue today. Not only are we automatically criminalized because the color of our skin, but we are also targeted daily because of these stereotypes. How is something like this fair in the eyes of the law? We, even years after slavery and Jim Crow, are still seen as less than human. We are seen as less than white and that is all we will ever be seen as. Samuel L. Jackson in the movie, A Time to Kill, stated to his lawyer in the movie "[...] When you look at me you don't see me as a man, you see me as a black man." White people put these racial divisions in place and now even hundreds of years after they still affect whether a young black boy deserves a fair trial or not, whether he is dead or alive.

This issue effects me, as a young African American woman, because I too fear for my life daily. The sight of a badge and blue uniform makes me my heart race and not only does it make me feel unsafe, it makes me feel uneasy. Like my life is nothing to the eyes of the law and that if I died tomorrow would my perpetrator go to jail or would I also be seen as a criminal because I wore a hoodie, or because I took my phone out of my pocket and checked the time. I have two young nephews, 6 and 2. In 10 years, what would this world be like for them? It is sad that before you can even teach a child to read you have to teach them how to at least be respectful enough so that law enforcement will not see you as a threat, and even then that still may not be enough. Young black just so happen to be their biggest prey and it's sad because no one can protect them. They have to grow up in a world that will not see them as children, but young black children. Jazmine Hughes' stated once, referring to someone's personal story, "It was the last day of school, and I was walking with my dad, preparing to leave. Suddenly, he paused, looked at me intently and said, 'Son, you're a black male, and that's two strikes against you.' To the general public, anything that I did would be perceived as malicious and deserving of severe punishment and I had to govern myself accordingly. I was seven years old."African American men in particular have to walk on eggshells around law enforcement, praying that maybe today they will not become their next victim. This issue is plaguing America's mind and creating an even deeper division of color, and any person that is not of color that believes that we, as African Americans, have it easy, clearly don't know the statistics of lives lost and how many of these murderers are still walking around free while a young man or woman is 6 feet under, and their family wasn't even able to tell them goodbye.