Special Note: This post will be my least uniformed blog post due to the built up emotions from recent events caused by the death of Baltimore black man, Freddie Gray. It’s my duty as a Baltimore writer to talk about this the way mainstream media does not want us to. PLEASE KNOW THIS FIRST WHILE YOU READ THIS: I AM NOT A JOURNALIST, now. I AM WRITING AS A BLACK WOMAN FROM THE CITY OF BALTIMORE!
Words pour onto paper as I’ve become a part of American history today while I write about what my eyes have witness on April 25, 2015, a day which I thought I would never see my city be the forefront of America for something so severe and extremely civil. I thought it was a part of mankind’s inhumane struggle that Black people conquered, or at least scratched the surface of overcoming. But we haven’t and it’s obvious to the world now.
America is governed by a system corrupt that uses the very people who help build this very nation as a stepping stool to bringing the world back to square one by embarrassing my whole race through provoking us to move; by tormenting Blacks unfairly.
As a Black woman, myself, and a blogger who lives in Baltimore, it is my duty to talk about the problems my city faces in the eyes of millions, nationally and internationally, who are watching my town react to police brutality towards yet another African-American male, who met his end in the most unfortunate and unfair manner society could ever grant, death by the very people meant to protect him.
Who is Freddie Gray?
If you don’t know by now, get the fuck off my blog. You don’t care enough. This post isn’t for those who rather sit in their ignorance while we are at war. This post isn’t for the people seeking to view how “ratchet” and “routy” my city is to confirm our “home of The Wire” reputation. This post is not for people who go on major media outlets social media pages to read and participate in the racist comments. This post is to wake you the fuck up! This post is meant to make you realize from the eyes of a Baltimore writer that something really messed up is going on. So open your eyes.
Baltimore, what are we doing? No, let me redirect my concerns to the correct group of individuals… America, what are we doing? No, no, no. WORLD, what the fuck is going on?!
These last two years of my life has been about watching a massacre of black men, AND black women, being slaughtered by a system who prays on a culture who isn’t united and hasn’t been since we were active in the 1960s US Civil rights movement. The way that I feel about it, I have no words for what’s going on in my heart. I have no words for how I see my country being portrayed. I have no words for how my race is being treated. I only feel a fire burning within me from how close to home Freddie Gray’s death has hit thousands and thousands of hearts around this country, and I’m in awe because I would have never thought something this relentless happening in front of billions of people watching is happening in my very own backyard.
I CANNOT BELIEVE MY EYES! This shit happens everywhere else, not in my home.
As each month unfolds since the death of Trayvon Martin, I started to view my country as the ultimate hypocrite and bully. I use to watch and read about the United States in international affairs while growing up, thinking how phoney we must be to walk into other countries, like Liberia and South Africa, trying to assist with their racial issues when in neighborhoods where I live didn’t match up to the persona America tries to paint for the world to see. It is here, the media hides what’s really happening between blacks and whites, until now. Why? Our country’s own racism was hidden and blocked from mainstream media and majority of this country’s citizen for so long, so we could believe we were past oppression; to make us feel like we could give a helping hand to other cultures around the world. America needed us on the same page so we could be viewed by countries around us as “land of the free” and “home of the brave.”
Black people have fallen by the arms of police officers since forever ago, and white people, and even black people, still want to yell out one of the most irrelevant and most repeated statements recited in recent years as if it’s an excuse for why we shouldn’t make a difference in our law enforcers policies. “Blacks kill blacks all the time.” WE KNOW THIS! WTF DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH POLICE KILLING US TOO!?
Black people I need you to listen! I need you to open your eyes because this is what’s real.
Do you know we are being manipulated by national news? Of all things to capture and broadcast to the world, they choose the most uncalled for and offensive images to represent our race at such a delicate moment in our history because they know it will make our uneducated youth move and take an opportunity like protesting as an excuse to “show out” and express their anger, when they don’t even know what to be angry about. Do you know we are being made to have opinions that we’re unsure of because the media knows this will make us angry and ready for a revolution? And why is it that our own news stations WJZ and WBAL are taking a different approach in reporting about Freddie Gray than stations like CNN and the Huffington Post? Nothing’s making sense. This isn’t adding up.
Do you realize the media’s power, now? LISTEN!
Though we are made to believe the media is not bias, people of Baltimore and black people around the world, we do not have control of the media’s motivation to stay unbiased. Even I am being bias now (and I encourage you to continue to have your own opinions during this time. All I ask is that you realize and watch everything going on)! The media is what’s making police brutality the fuel of our anger ; it’s turning it into something bigger than expected. The media, which is funded by BIG corporations who bank on black people’s money, are making my culture out to be unruly savages and it does not sit well with me. It makes me angry. It’s what made me step up and write how I feel today. Black people I don’t blame you at all. We have a right to be mad, but it is unwise to be so turbulent.
To me, this is beyond race. Racism is being used as a tool to push a bigger motive because it’s the only way to get large bodies of people to move. We have to be wiser. We have to be smarter in our decisions because 10 years ago, we lived in a better peace. But with the media suddenly pushing stories about police brutality incorrectly more often, seems every couple of weeks to days, it’s also corporations that are funding the media’s weapon to wither our peace away and box us in for something we don’t fully understand yet.
So what is real? What is true? We can’t rely on our reporters to be honest and staying away from these stereotypes we’re fighting about.
To all the kids who are reading this, you must choose now to learn your history. You need not act before you are educated. Do you see how dangerous it is to go through this? This entire ordeal isn’t transparent enough, and this anger escalating within us is not good, especially coming from a group like us who can’t get past light skin and dark skin.
Peace, love, joy. Peace, love, joy, everyone.
Why is it that America decides to use my backyard as a war zone this week? America decides to take the city that I’ve spent the last 3 years trying to help put on the map, positively, as a target and guinea pig for a bigger agenda. Can you image how I feel right now? For someone who spends all her spare time trying to help the city become angry with her fellow Baltimoreans. They don’t see the bigger picture, and rather dig a bigger hole for us to climb out of? I’m so disappointed and proud at the same time. This is why I have no words. I’m so all over the place.
I doubt this will be my last post on this. I’ve been awakened.
I ask that anyone who lives outside of my city to turn to the World Wide Web for real accounts of what my city is doing in honor of Freddie Gray and not CNN. I ask you to read about what we are really going through from us. I ask that you empathize for us. I ask that you pray.
#PrayForBaltimore #PrayForMyCity
Scornful men bring a city into a snare: but wise men turn away wrath. -Proverbs 28:9
Let us be wise men. To Be Continued…
Did you participate in the Baltimore Protests? Read “The Current Generation Doesn’t Take Part In Civil Rights Movements Because…” on Doc’s Castle Media.