Dead or in Jail: The Burden of Being a Black Man in America
By Wilbert L. Cooper
Senior Editor
All photos by Awol Erizku
"The day you were born, there was a pine box and a prison cell built with your name on it."
I can relate to the blinding, hot rage I've seen swallow up so many other brothers of my generation, from the pain they foolishly inflict against one another because their arms can't reach the system to the pain they inflict upon themselves because they are trying to escape the realities of the everyday. It's in those fits of anger that I wonder, Were we always destined to live and die this way, like savages in the street or alone in cold cells? And if this is it, why did our parents have us at all? Why bring us into this world where our lives are short and wracked with pain?
snip/
But even if we manage to avoid the death-or-jail-cell quagmire my father warned me about, there's still the plantation in our minds to contend with. The terror we live under today may not be comparable to that of the 1860s, but the fear, the humiliation, and the emasculation remain in subversive and subtle forms, creeping in and crippling us from the inside. Of course, not every altercation between the police and black youth ends in death, but the indignities we endure every day take a different kind of toll. They chip away at our personhood, our humanity, and can very easily make us meek—or else a uniquely American breed of monster.
When I first began to tune into the slew of cryptic videos and horror stories that have been arriving by the boatful in the last few years, I wanted to weep. What I did instead is weep inside until my emotional well went dry. And then I started to feel nothing but a gnawing angst, searing through the sides of my belly.
It's that burning feeling that at one time made me certain I would never bring another black child into this world. For what? To be beaten, to be caged, to be taught to hate himself and everyone who shares the same skin as him? There was a time when I couldn't imagine subjecting anyone else to that curse, that burden.
Read More http://www.vice.com/read/dead-or-in-jail-the-burden-of-being-a-black-man-in-america-804?utm_source=vicetwitterus
It is a long read, so powerful. So much pain, fear and despair yet the last line gives me hope, that they will overcome.
I am weeping.
= new reply since forum marked as read
isn't possible. Thank you for posting, sheshe. 
whole Compassionate, Empathic, and Loving part of our country to stand up for our Black Brothers and Sisters.. Against the thuggery of police violence.
Wilbert L Cooper is a powerful, compelling writer.. thank you so much for this, she.
And, #BlackLivesMatter is doing Amazingly Brilliant Work to make more People aware of the African American deaths by cops across the nation
post and I see you're still up, she!
I was thinking over what I had written and I decided I needed to give a better shout out to the activists and supporters of #BLM!
Thank you
LOL
That should work.
I just posted this on that other thread we were on about Hill bowing out with grace.
Lol~ gotta go
