Why My Black Son Came to Me Distraught Because of the Rittenhouse Verdict
I had to bring him back to the fight, but it's a conversation I am tired of having.
He came to me visibly upset. It hit him in the face like a wet dishcloth. The Rittenhouse verdict was in, and once again, he saw the double-dealing and ugliness of the justice system.
He shook with rage and disappointment. Hope sapped from his soul as he wiped angry and bitter tears from tired eyes. The melanin soaked into his skin, a burden laced with generational trauma. If he were Rittenhouse and carried a loaded rifle to a demonstration and did what the young jewel and the love of white America did, he would’ve died in those Kenosha streets labeled a criminal and a thug. His body riddled with bullets like Jacob Blake.
The white officer who crippled Blake got away to patrol the streets once more. “Where’s the justice for that black man?” He said.
“Marching and protests don’t solve shit,” he said. It's time for a revolution. It’s only a matter of time before more blood is in the streets.
I looked at my 23-year-old son and cried in my spirit for the America he lives in. The America, his ancestors, seasoned with their blood in the south's vicious and hot cotton fields.
