Member-only story
To Be A Black Male in 2020 America
Fears, pain and sorrow
I know where I live. I know that the country I love, often doesn’t return that love. I know America has a long history of cruelty to black men and women leading from more than 400 years ago up until four minutes ago, if not four seconds. But I guess with the pandemic and the economic downturn, I’d assumed there would be no thirst for the blood of black men this year.
Some part of me believed that even a racist police officer would be too concerned for his own health to kneel on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds. I thought they would’ve saved him for next year, like a deer hunter giving a young buck another season to come into his own.
But they decided he was ripe and ready to be harvested. I stared at a TV screen with tears seeming to boil in my eyes. Even now? I asked the screen, almost choking on my own tears.
The executioner shall not be kept from his work.
A few days before, I’d made a joke with a friend that if I were a cop in 2020 nobody would get a ticket. There was no way I’d walk up to some stranger’s opened car window and give them a chance to cough or sneeze with me standing right there, no way. I damned sure wouldn’t frisk anyone.
