To Whom It May Concern The State of Affairs TODAY

To whom it may concern,

As an African American mother of four sons, I was constantly asked: What do they play? To which I would calmly answer: They don’t want to play ball, they want to be thinkers, creators, healers, or anything that their intelligence or talents take them to.

But understand this: I did not raise them to be target practice for anyone. Not for the men and women in blue who are supposed to serve and protect. Instead they shoot first and degrade next. Not to the people of their own race who should love and celebrate, instead they kill and hate.

Because my pen is greater than my chatter, and my anger is greater than my laughter.

Do not ever think because you might not understand my culture or dialect, that I don’t love mine as much as the next. I cannot help that you have not taken the time to understand where I come from; it is not my fault that you colored history with only certain crayons.

We want our sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, uncles, and nephews to come home to us, the same way that they left us. Not cold on a slab, with people trying to justify that it doesn’t matter because YOU think they are a thug.

Our lives matter just like everyone else, but if you wear a uniform, you shoot us, kill us, go home with pay and chill. NOT COOL.

And you want to know Why am I angry?

Because just like you, I worry about mine. Just like you I worry about accidents, sickness, or a natural disaster. But unlike you I have to worry if mine will get stopped for a minor offence and his life will cease to exist. No matter if he is right, wrong, obnoxious, sitting, standing, looking for his wallet; or being calm; you feel that your badge gives you the right to unleash undue harm. I can teach, talk and train until I am blue in face, but that still does not make you understand that behind that dark face; is a person, of the human race.

You want to judge what you don’t understand; you want everyone to conform to make you comfortable. Disregarding that we are different but the same. When we rage against the injustice; you want to stigmatize us for believing that BLACK LIVES MATTER. All lives matter, but there are a few that don’t understand that ALL BLACK LIVES matter, not just ones that entertain you with a ball or on a movie screen.

Stop trivializing our men being hunted like animals, and expect us to do the same. Stop trying to make us feel bad for expressing ourselves and caring about our own. Stop thinking that because you can criminalize the victim to make yourselves feel better, that it makes us feel better. Or understand.

You have taken no time to understand our culture, our pain, or our suffering; but when you mourn you want everyone to mourn. When we mourn we are ridiculed, humiliated, and ostracized.

Do you still want to know why I am angry?

Let me help you further. I work real hard to love all people, and see no color; why can’t you do the same? How can you tell me that you can’t believe that OUR men are being shot down because of their race, when others have created a massacre and we still see their faces?

Why are OUR men not given a chance to right their wrongs? When yours can rape someone and get off with a song? Can you still tell me that you don’t see the problem? If you can’t then YOU are the problem.

My heart is crying because I love mine, but I’m not asking for underSTANDING; I just want them to be STANDING after a 911 call. Don’t worry so much if they STAND for a song that was not written for them or about them, just worry that they can still stand after their car stalls in the road.

Now to the brothers and sisters that want to kill and alienate your own. What will it take for you to understand that BLACK LIVES MATTER.

Let’s keep it REAL You need to realize that real is providing, loving and educating our people. To provide you have to be there and be able to work. To love you have to erase jealousy from your heart and understand that material things do not give you power. You have to educate your own people with the truth, you don’t have to have a lot of book sense, just common sense.

Selling drugs and going to prison is not glamorous, and the only glamorous thing about the ghetto is getting out of it. YOU should be the main role model to your sons and daughters, stop giving credit to people who do not know or care about your kids. Stop thinking that a gun or money makes you king, and realize that you are a descendant of kings, and your crown lives inside of you.

Stop letting our innocent children idolize and be influenced by the streets, so that you have more time to ‘turn up’ or let somebody ‘give you life’. Somebody gave you a life; your child, and you need to create a life to carry on your legacy. A legacy that should be more than prison, drugs, and killing.

Why would you want your legacy to be lifelong struggle and trying to come up? What materialistic things can you carry to another generation? If it is not a business, then you can at least leave your descendants with love of God, respect of people, and dignity.

Why would you want to fill the prisons with generational stench, eliminating the need to build more schools and colleges to matriculate, instead of stagnate?

Yes I am angry with you! YOU are also part of the problem. You want to reproduce for the sake of fornication without the benefit of matrimony, and leave your seed the crumbs of despair. A despair you have created with irresponsibility and ignorance.

Despair that is heard by deaf ears, ears that wanted it easy, and made it hard for those that count. Your seed. Your son that is turning to streets to be raised because you aren’t there; either by choice or incarceration. Your daughter who is turning to the streets for a love that don’t love her, because she is just another baby momma.

How dare you make a choice for a child who did not choose to come here?

How dare you riot in the streets when one of our own is killed by BLUE when you have shed the same blood? You come out for right when you are just as wrong. How Dare YOU.

YOU are also part of the problem.

How dare you get mad at my truth, but can smile in your sons face and tell a lie?

How dare you make it easier for your own people to take two steps back, so that you can trap?

How dare you make it harder for every BLACK man that does not want to live the thug life!

How dare you say BLACK LIVES MATTER when BLACK LIVES don’t matter to you!

Warm regards,

An Angry African American Mother