Did you know that black persons bleed, breathe, cry, laugh – just like you and I?
Did you know that black persons have feelings, pride, aspirations, self-respect – just like you and I?
Did you know that black persons feel pain, suffer rejection and humiliation, experience joy and sadness, fall in love – just like you and I?
Did you know that black persons have honorably – many times heroically — served our country in war and peace, have bled, and died for our flag – just like many of us?
Did you know that black persons get married, have children, have parents, have brothers and sisters and want nothing but the best for their loved ones – just like you and I?
Brother did you know that the difference between a black person and a white person is skin deep? That white skin is mainly due to the production of eumelanin and black skin due to the production of pheomelanin?
Brother did you know that the only difference between President Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump – other than skin color – is character?
The “mixing pot” we call America evolved mainly from “Native Americans,” Europeans and “African Americans.”
The history of Native Americans – the “First Peoples in the Americas” – goes back thousands of years. We know all too well how they fared when the Europeans arrived in the New World.
Europeans who, seeking freedom and prosperity for themselves, decimated the native population through the introduction of diseases and the infliction of unspeakable violence. Europeans who also deprived millions of African men, women and children of their freedom and humanity — all to achieve that “freedom and prosperity.”
Native Americans and African Americans have come a long way since those dark days.
But a “long way” is hardly long when one still has to be afraid of walking our streets while black, jogging while black, driving while black, swimming in a community pool while black, birdwatching while black, running a lemonade stand while black, stepping into an elevator while black, voting while black, sitting in a car while black, sleeping in a parked car while black, even being black while in the sanctity of one’s own home.
In short, afraid of living in America while black, more than 150 years after slavery was abolished, more than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act and decades after additional civil rights legislation was passed.
Many of us would like to know why.
