Why Do You Fear Me? Fodaylin Hayes

Why Do You Fear Me?

Why do you fear me? I turn on my tv and the first thing that I see on my screen are the tears of a mother, flowing down her face like the blood of her son spilling onto the pavement. Your eyes turn Skittles into pistols and water guns into threatening ones. You shoot, suffocate and steal lives with knees on necks, holes in hearts serving death sentences for the crime of being black in America. I once was told in the back of my elementary school bus that I should have no pride because I was black. Not only was I black, but I was 8. Not only was the boy who said it to me white, but he was 8. You kill black children and you birth ignorance in the white ones. You send them out thinking f the blacks is a joke, picking cotton is a punchline, using the N-word is humor. Yet the only funny thing is how, despite all this hate for our skin, you love to steal our music, our styles, and our dignity. Little Infants are getting hate that is growing to f us all. But apparently, that is the only “thug’s life” that doesn’t deserve to end. My people are owned, hosed, degraded, segregated, humiliated, decimated, confiscated, emancipated, but still enslaved to the hearts filled with hate. Hate is no safer than a gun. It makes people blind. It causes all you see to be: Black people are lazy; black people are ghetto; black people are thugs; black people are… People.

Black people are people you owned, people you hosed, people you segregated, confiscated, humiliated, DECIMATE…

Decimate: Kill, destroy or remove a large percentage or portion of…

You look at a black child and you see a danger; I look at a black child and I see…. Tamir Rice: a 12-year-old who lost the fight in toy gun vs. Real one. Trayvon Martin: a 17-year-old who died with Skittles in his pockets and bullets in his chest. Antwon Rose Jr. Jordan Edwards Laquan McDonald Emmett Till George Stinney Jr. SAY THEIR NAMES. Today, as a white child is sent out to play, a black one is kept inside to hear the same message that is a tradition in black households: Use “yes officer” and “no officer.” Keep your hands visible at all times. Never give them a reason. And pray they don’t find one anyway. We are prepped on a subject that should not concern us yet as young children, but needing to be taught this lesson is proof of no real progression as we’re still stuck in the oppression that sends young black children to heaven with gunshots that deafen leaving me with the question:

Why do YOU fear ME?

Fodaylin Hayes, Grade 8 Anoka Middle School for the Arts, Anoka Teaching Artist: Frank Sentwali