Why!!!

I can't let this time, in my life, pass without speaking on the issue of what being black in America right now means to me. Yes, I said right now, because the police are taking our lives at an enormous rate. Not only do I have to worry about the regular riff raff out there who may want to harm me but now the police. The ones whom I'm supposed to call when in distress. This bullshit has got to cease immediately. Unarmed black men complying with the law getting shot, dead. Not shot in the leg or arm to immobilize you, but in the head or heart. Call it what you want but it's modern day lynching perpetuated by the racial divide brought on by the media.

This topic is serious to me because at one point I, myself was staring at the barrel of a police officers gun for a mere traffic stop. About two years ago I was headed home from my job at 10pm. I got stopped because they ran my license plate and it showed that my registration was a week overdue and I needed to get new plates. Honestly it slipped my mind because at the time I was in college full-time and working full-time. But back to the story. The female officer came over to my window, talking very aggressively, asking where am I coming from. So, I said, "what did I do to get stopped"? In my mind, I'm like, wherever I'm going is really none of your business and irrelevant to the reason that you stopped me. Then she looks in the back seat and sees my backpack and my lunch bag and asks do you work in the area..."yes ...what did I do?" You need to get new plates, your registration is expired. "Oh ok, I'm sorry, I forgot." She asks for license and insurance. I said ok. I gave her my license, then I go to reach in the glove compartment for insurance, only to notice a male officer at the passenger window with his gun drawn and pointed at me.....I jumped back and said, " shit, you scared me." Then here is when I truly knew that I was in a fucked up situation because the female officer told me that I should be scared. I said, "do you want the insurance or not." They finally let me get the insurance but the gun was still pointed at me. Till today, I can't even tell you how I felt. I felt violated and disrespected for nothing. Why was he pointing the gun at me? Was it because I was a black individual driving through a predominantly white and wealthy area? An area that I drove through for 10 plus years. And to add insult to injury this BITCH had the nerve to tell me that I should be scared. She had no right, as a police officer, to say that I should be scared of them. What I did know, as I drove off, is that I could have been killed. What if he got nervous and pulled that trigger? I've been living in Dallas for about 20 years and I couldn't even tell my family about the incident because I didn't want them to worry about my every move out here.

I am black. Me being black does not make me a threat, nor does it make me violent or disobedient to laws. I demand the same respect as my other human counterparts. And, despite all of the killings by police officers that are occurring now, I refuse to let it put a level of fear in me. In my opinion, marching and protesting will not solve the issue. That worked back in the day. This is a new time and we're dealing with a whole new Devil. The government and the media need to be held to a higher level of responsibility. We need to be conscious of the elected officials that we are voting for. For some of us, our lives depend on it. How can this be the home of the free when some of us are scared to drive our own cars to the store, because it might end with us getting stopped and killed. In my life there is only one beginning and one ending. God is the giver of both, not someone in a blue uniform with a white face.