Strange Fruit

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may tread me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

—Maya Angelou

A little over two weeks ago, Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who lived in the Gilmor Homes neighborhood of Baltimore, MD was brutally beaten by the Baltimore police; the majority of his spine was severed, his spleen ruptured and his voice box crushed. On April 19, he died.

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"Every day, black and brown people live in fear of becoming a social media hashtag or a name etched into a gravestone or a minute-segment on their local news."

Today, no police officer has been held accountable for the death of Freddie Gray. This is something all too familiar in Baltimore, a city that has had a long and violent history with police brutality, and its citizens have chosen to respond in many ways, both violently and peacefully. Yet the narrative of Gray and Baltimore is the narrative of America. America has been constantly reminding Black people that their lives do not matter and that the police were never meant to protect them through instances like Michael Brown, whose murderer was not indicted, Eric Garner, who said “I can’t breathe” 11 times and whose murderer was not indicted, and Aiyana Stanley-Jones, who was seven-years-old sleeping in the house when she was shot and killed and whose murderer still walks free. Although some may feel that the rioters and looters in Baltimore are hurting their own city, is it really your city when you feel like you don’t belong? Or when you don’t feel safe in its streets? Or when you are constantly living in fear of losing your life?

So, I stand with Baltimore. And, because I am privileged enough to have different means to be heard, it’s easy for me to say that I wouldn’t riot. But for those who demand to be heard and are not as privileged, their violence is just as valid as my pen, and I wholeheartedly defend their emotional response to this emotional event. One cannot continue to suppress a people without expecting them to rise up. A dead daughter or son cannot embrace her or his mother, a dead father or mother cannot see his or her children; simply put, a lost life cannot be brought back. So, anger is an accurate emotion. I am angry towards the white supremacist culture; I am angry towards the establishments that enforce it; I am angry towards those who idly watch the police murder my black and brown brothers and sisters.

Every day, black and brown people live in fear of becoming a social media hashtag or a name etched into a gravestone or a minute-segment on their local news. I am tired of grieving. I am tired of mourning. I am tired of the fact that when black people riot against an oppressive system the media portrays them as criminals and animals, but when white people riot over sports or a Pumpkin festival media portrays them as die-hard fans or crazy. I am tired of ignorant comments, racist remarks and people who choose to blind their eyes to the reality of the black and brown experience.

But still I find hope. Through my tiredness, I know a better day is yet to come. The seeds of black people that were stomped deep into the dirt over four hundred years ago has grown its roots, its trunk, now strong, its leaves, many, and now we are witnessing the fruit of our labors, ripening slowly. Oh, how sweet it shall taste.