What My Eyes Could See
When my eyes could see over the table, or maybe sometime around then, my views started to change. I started to realize that you didn’t just get treated a certain way because you did the right thing. I started to realize that the way people saw each other dictated how they processed their actions. Two people could do the same thing, but the lenses people used could distort the actions of one of those people, especially if they didn’t like the look of that person.
I started to realize this because I was different. And I was treated very differently. And maybe that’s a good thing, because it always made my eyes see.
When my eyes were mature enough to read a book about Martin Luther King, I cried. I cried because this fight that this amazing man had fought, did not feel so foreign to me. Yes, it happened before I was born, but it didn’t mean that it was long ago. It didn’t mean that the hatred that made those atrocities possible during the Civil Rights Movement had been eradicated. That hatred was still there, often hidden under a veil of civility that could be threatened if the wind blew in the wrong direction.
My eyes could see that hatred was there and that civility was sometimes tenuous at best.
And so my eyes turned to the news. And year after year, the incidences of cases of mistrials against young, black men seem to increase. The statistics on the number of black men who received exaggeratedly harsh sentences in comparison to their white brothers who committed similar crimes seemed inflated. Let’s not even touch on the number of black men who have died and will die under the death penalty in comparison to their white counterparts. This is not South Africa during apartheid, I would think. This is not the time of the esteemed Martin Luther King. These things can’t be happening.
This wasn’t his dream.
This is a nightmare, in fact.
Ferguson is a town in Missouri and it may seem very far away from many Americans. The reality is, Ferguson is not that far from any of us and what is happening there epitomizes America to it’s core. You can’t take a country and look only towards the good and not acknowledge the massive, bleeding wounds that can be recreated in any number of cities across this it. What’s equally scary about what happened in Ferguson is that these incidents are becoming all too familiar to America.
“Another black boy shot?”
“Oh, not this again.”
Yes, this. AGAIN. And AGAIN.
Except this time, the full horror of hearing that a boy was shot execution style by a police officer even after he put his hands up in the air, couldn’t go ignored. This is America. Michael Brown was an American boy. Americans cannot sit back and allow this kind of injustice to take place if we want to believe we are a country that respects and protects freedom for all. There is no way that this young man should be lying in his grave for whatever crime they are looking to connect him to. A pack of cigarettes, my ass.
There was a time when this young man couldn’t see over the table and hid behind his mother’s skirt as he navigated a roomful of strangers. There was a time where he went to bed at night believing that the world was good and kind to those who did what they were supposed to. Before he learned that he would be judged and looked at and sometimes dismissed by the color of his skin, he believed that he was special, because he was.
The protesters who are out there today are saying what I hope every American is fighting for in their heart. While this includes a plea for justice for Michael Brown, it also encompasses the hope that we do everything we can to prevent another boy from becoming the next Michael Brown.
And the hope that every child can believe as long as they can that the world is a fair and safe place.
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