Who Am I?-Personal Narrative

As a child, I used to wonder why my mother was always hesitant to let me be outside when the night came and why my dad always wanted me to wear light (visible) clothing. It was until one night, where I had a pretty scary encounter with an officer on my way back home that things started to make sense. You see I was out with my friends pretending to be warriors on an epic adventure and I lost track of time. Once I realized I was late, I began rushing home and my friends following behind and this soon became a race. As we approached my friends house (I lived about another block down) he caught up to me and began to wrestle me for first place. When I got the upper hand, a cop pulled up got out of his car and told me to freeze. I froze and the cop asked my friend if he was okay and if I did anything to him ( I forgot to mention my friend wasn't a person of color). "No way" I said speaking for my friend, then the cop told me to shut up while putting his hand on his holstered weapon. Luckily, my friend's father came out and handled the issue, he walked me home and explained what happened to my parents. The look of fear on my mother's face and anger on my father's face was one I have never seen before, and when my friend's dad left they turned to me and scolded me, but it all made sense.

The sense of it all is stated in the article written by Claudia Rankine "The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning" throughout my parents' life, their parents, their parents' parents, the loss of Black lives is something that they've grown to expect.

It was something that they all knew that the moment their child left their sights there was a possibility that their child might not return home. It is a generational fear, and it continues to be passed down because still " as a black person you can be killed for simply being black", no probable cause. With this knowledge, this fear, this constant state of mourning is something that has become a part of normal

life.

I remember hearing in class one day that they disliked the new Facebook feature that automatically plays videos because as they scroll down they come across videos of more dead Black bodies. They immediately felt sad and angry, and there was a unanimous agreement. But that feeling as Rankine stated, that constant state of mourning, is needed because it brings to light the undeniable truth that has been kept to Black lives with the hope "...that recognition will break a momentum that laws haven’t altered" because as of now a continuing fact is that "Dead blacks are a part of normal life here".