1:34am July 16, 2013

➸ Eye Like The Knight: Trayvon Martin =/= Emmett Till

eyeliketheknight:

People surprised about the Zimmerman verdict, have you actually paid any attention to the trial or Floridian law?

There’s no doubt that Trayvon Martin should be alive today.

To call this a racially motivated attack is speculation on a man’s internal motives, however I’d say it’s more than…

Let me just explain something right now:

I am a sixteen-year-old black girl living in the middle of the inner city. I will never forget about this.

Why?

Because I am in danger living in the country that I was born in.

I have been treated very poorly due to institutional racism. And that’s what this is. It’s a case founded entirely on stereotypes and misconceptions.

And you know what? Things like this happen all the time. They’re hidden by our government. In the last year, my mom has been arrested twice due to racial profiling and nothing else. She is an intelligent woman with dreadlocks, a muscular body, dark skin, and a deep voice. Because of this, while driving in the suburbs of our city- she has been arrested twice. She wasn’t doing anything wrong.

And this isn’t the first time that this has happened, either. When I was six, my mother was arrested for temporarily parking in a loading zone while dropping me off for school in the middle of Los Angeles. She didn’t pick me up that day.

I can still remember it very clearly as one of the most terrifying days of my life— people were whispering about me in the halls and wouldn’t explain what was going on.

A year before, a school in Louisiana attempted to put every black child in the school that I was attending into special education in order to attain funding illegally. I was one of these children.

This happens constantly. Every. Single. Day. Things like this will happen to me and every other black child that grows up in the United States.

Our government sucks, and our Court has made a horrible decision today that will affect many people of color’s opinion of America for generations- mine included. I’m terrified of this place.

There’s no way for you to counter that.