Living While Black

You throw on your favorite hoodie, gather your things, and go to the corner store to get a few days’ worth of groceries.

Even though the store owner jacks the price up on everything, you still shop there because the closest grocery story is twenty minutes away and you don’t have a car.

And even if you did, you couldn’t afford the car payment, insurance, and gas because even though you work two jobs and a side hustle, you’re broke two days after payday.

On the way to the store, you pass a white woman; she glares at you, pulls her purse tight, and then crosses the street. It’s not the first time this has happened to you, nor will it be the last.

You shrug and carry on, but then a cop car passes and you slow your step, holding your breath until it drives by.

You pick up the pace until you get to the store, where you remove your hoodie, but the person behind the register still eyes you cautiously.

You ignore him, get your stuff, and add a bag of skittles
and an ice tea to your order.

After paying, you’re down to twenty dollars until next
Friday.

You go home to find a message from your mother saying your uncle Jules has died and the funeral will be in three days. It’s too late to request a day off from your jobs, and you couldn’t afford the greyhound ride there and back, so you ask your mother to take plenty of pictures and send them to you.

After eating a meal of over-processed food, you shower and change for work, then walk to the bus stop; you’ll spend the next two hours transferring from bus to bus before getting to your first job, working minimum wage at a big box store.

Your coworkers are mostly lower middle-class white people,
and when they don’t think you’re in earshot, they let loose nigger jokes, only
to be all smiles to your face.

You’ve been at this job the longest but have only received a
twenty-five- cent raise. Meanwhile, Joe, who has only been there two months,
was promoted to assistant store manager.

You shake your head but continue stocking the shelves until your boss tells you to go work the register because Leanne is out sick with another of her “family emergencies.” Given that it’s Monday, you surmise that said family emergency had something to do with her friends Jack Daniels and Natty Light.

She’s come to work hungover several times, yet when you came in a only few minutes late, your boss ripped you a new one and docked your pay for the day.

You force a smile as you ring up customers, ignoring their
rude behavior and condescending attitudes because you’re not moving fast enough
for them.

You get through your shift without killing someone, and
thank God for small miracles.

You clock out, walk to the fast food joint across the
street, and get two items off their dollar menu.

You finish eating, catch the bus home, shower, and then head
out to your next job working sanitation engineering for a hospital. It’s just a
fancy way of saying you’re a janitor.

You do your job without complaint, only to come home and
find a past-due notice for your student loans.

Life wasn’t always like this.

You did well in school and had dreams of becoming a mogul Like Russel Simmons, Diddy, Or Jay-Z. However, you quickly found that if you weren’t willing to suck up to the old-moneyed white establishment and play the roles they deemed you were worthy of, you got nowhere.

So, you told your boss to shove it up his ass and quit.

But all those years of business classes didn’t go to waste;
you’ve used your marketing skills to build a brand as the go-to weed dealer in
the tri-county area, and you’ve been saving up to start your own medical
marijuana dispensary, and selling weed on the side until then.

You know that if the police catch you, there won’t be any
community service, probation, or house arrest. You’ll just be another statistic
of the Prison-Industrial Complex.

But what choice do you have?

Even when you were hobnobbing with the upper crust in your $5,000-suits and custom-made Italian Leather loafers, people looked down on you and assumed you were a server.

You have ramen noodles and a candy bar for dinner. Afterwards, you turn on the news to learn white police officers have killed yet another unarmed black person.

Sure, people will protest, but yet again, the cops will get off. Assuming they’re even charged in the first place.

Not for the first time you wonder how a country that was
founded upon the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness,” could treat you and others less than dirt.

Then you remember when Thomas Jefferson wrote those words he
was rapping Sally Hemmings, one of his slaves, and that blacks were only
three-fifths a person for the purpose of the census.

Like many, you thought the election of Obama would have eased racial tensions and marked an end to America racist past. However, all it did was give racists a convenient target to project their hate upon.

And now when you or other black people bring up things like institutional racism or the school to prison pipe line, you’re told you’re stirring the pot because if America was so racist why did they elect and then re-elect a black man president?

You shake your head.

One black president doesn’t make up for the centuries of
slavery, Jim Crow, red lining, and the continued discrimination and bigotry
against black people.

You turn the TV off and go to bed, hoping tomorrow will be better.

Conclusion

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