Black Children Lives Matter
One Thursday night, one of my favorite cousins picked up her six year old son and seventeen year old son from her parents’ house. Her six year old son asks, “mommy did the news tell you that the police are killing kids?” She responds and tells him yes, however what the six year old asks next is what stuns my cousin into a world of silence and fear. He asks will the police kill his older brother. The harsh reality of police shooting unarmed Black men and women is something that has captured the attention of a six year old Black kid and has prompted him to worry about the life of his oldest brother. Granted, the complexities of life have not fully come into view yet for the six year old and the teenager, but what does stand out to them is that there is a target on their backs.
From the days of Emmett Till to now, open season for Black lives has been the favorite season of white hunters that wear a badge that empowers them to legally kill us without consequence. Those that are murdered are often demonized by a media that tells a partial story of the victim’s life by calling them a thug, substance abuser and non-compliant to officers. This further pushes a narrative by far right racists that if ‘they would have complied, then they would still be alive.’ This narrative has been disproven multiple times, especially in the age of smartphones and social media.
On April 20th, 2021, Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd in broad daylight on camera, was found guilty of second and third degree murder as well as second-degree manslaughter, although this was a small victory, this was not the justice that we were looking for because moments later the news reported that Columbus, Ohio police shoot teenage Mykhia Bryant in the chest.
Black children being killed by renegade white cops and super bullies that devalue the lives of these potential leaders. In 2014, in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, 12 year old Tamir Rice was shot down by 26 year old white officer Timothy Loehmann, all because he was a Black kid in the park playing with a toy gun. In Sanford, Fl, Trayvon Martin was murdered by police wanna-be George Zimmerman in 2012, even after the police dispatch told him not to approach Martin. Dating all the way back to 1955, when Emmett Louis Till was only 14 years old when he was murdered by a crowd of white men because of a lie that a white woman told.
Black children are not exempt from this execution that is plaguing the Black community. They are being used as targets in a system that is designed to suppress and oppress the Black community. This level of ethnic cleansing is really reaching levels of depopulation. Making up only approximately 12 percent of this nation's population, with the continued state sponsored executions will there be a future for Black children to grow up into Black adults?
In 1977, Soul/RnB singer George Benson once said that he believes ‘the children are the future.’ Can that future still exist if Black children are being killed off and then perpetuated as the villians? While the world battles a pandemic, my 6 year old cousin only notices that police are killing kids, and hopes that he and his brothers are not the next targets.