America hates me because of my skin color. And she is comfortable with killing me.

John Crawford III, a 22-year-old black man, was shot and killed by police on the 5th of August 2014.  He was shot inside of Walmart for shopping; he was holding a pellet gun one can buy from the store.  It should be mentioned that Ohio is a open-carry state, which means he is well within his rights to carry a side arm or long arm provided that it’s in plain view… and it was.  On the 24th of September 2014, a grand jury decided that the police officers who slain an innocent man will not face indictments.

9/11 became a day of remembrance of the effects of terrorism.  While I planned on arguing for 9/11 to become a day to remember ALL past terrorism inflictions in the United States, it’s certainly 9/24 when I finally realized the gravity of the situation at hand when it comes to terror within these United States.  I realized these things:

• Afrophobia — an irrational fear of people of African Diaspora — is more important than my right to live.
• A badge is a get-out-of-jail-free card.
• A sizable constituency of white America would be more than happy to see me dead just because I’m black…
• …And a larger constituency of whites are too cowardly to challenge this system of oppression by race.
• America doesn’t want me to exist as an American.  Why?  Because I’m black, that’s why.

When I realized these things, I immediately thought of my family:  two brothers, one’s eight, the other’s nine.  I thought of my father as well.  I thought of immediately renouncing my citizenship and fleeing; I haven’t a clue where.  France?  Germany?  Spain?  Sudan?  Morocco?  Mexico?  Brazil?  China?  I wanted to take my family with me; no one left behind.  Nine Twenty-Four became the day I realized that we as Americans live in, very much technically, a democracy that allows state-sponsored terrorism to be inflicted upon its own people.  We are Americans–all of us.  But unfortunately we all are not treated on equal terms.  John Crawford was gunned down by cops in 1.6 seconds.  There was NO time for anyone to yell anything like “put down the gun” or even “freeze, police” in 1.6 seconds. This is what happened:

1. A loser calls 911 over-exaggerating the the instance of a black man shopping for a gun in Walmart.
2. Police knows he’s a black man, thus are mentally primed to shoot instantaneously.
3. Caller still over-exaggerates to police dispatch.
4. Police murders John Crawford within 1.6 seconds of seeing him.

Why?  Because he’s black.  But so are 40 million other American people.  This is what state sponsored terror looks like.  An authority figure–a symbol of something all within the public should be able to trust–is fully capable of murdering you without any proper repercussions, to include paid-leave, technically a paid-vacation for killing unarmed black males.  An entire people of the United States are currently suffering from a sociological trauma because of all of this.  The fact that you fear for your life because you don’t know what will trigger a policeman’s Afrophobic murdering tendencies?  The fact that you struggle to teach your young how to deal of cops?  The fact that this isn’t normal for those who exist on the plane of white privilege?  That helpless feeling as a citizen of this republic that anathematizes black skin on a daily basis?  That’s sociological trauma.

While there are in fact more white people who are aware of this situation and they are currently fighting against the system for the greater good (as illustrated in this photo), most whites are in denial of the situation at hand.  It is deeply frustrating to explain this to white people who simply just don’t get it; the only time they suffer a grand traumatic effect is with Islamic foreign terrorism… something that our nation answers to with retaliation.  So there you have it:  a State of Terror for one, and a State of Denial for the other.

While I continue to argue for 9/11 to be a day of remembrance for ALL acts of terror inflicted on American peoples, 9/24 is the day that rocked my life.  Still, my goals remain unfettered.  All of this means that there’s still work to be done.