Born With Melanin: Sun Kissed Lives Matter

I only see a couple dozen sun kissed faces on this campus daily. And that is something that I’ve wanted to address about the sun kissed community at Penn State since it was brought to my attention; thereImage result for black unity are only a couple thousand of us. With such small numbers, and with the majority group dominating everything from leadership roles to faculty positions, my brothers and sisters sometimes feel that they don’t have a leg to stand on. The question is: how can we feel respected and recognized with such small numbers? And also, how can we seek justice for things that we see, but other groups don’t even have to recognize?

Just this past weekend, my cousin who’s my age was leaving campus with her mother and two sisters in their family car. It took no further than three blocks for the police to pull my cousin and her family over, outside of the CVS downtown. The officers called it a “random license plate check,” and proceeded to make them take all of their things out of the car. They even had to take my cousin’s 3 month old sister out of the car and place her on the sidewalk while the cops had a towing company hook it up. To add insult to injury, the towing company sent their man, clad in a confederate flag t-shirt that read “The South Shall Rise Again,” to take the car. A few minutes after I got there, the cop turned to this young man and asked, “How’s your grandfather doing?” I suppose they know each other very well.

Seeing the tears in my cousin’s eyes does not leave me with much else more than disdain for the racists who dwell within and around this campus. This man’s shirt really got me thinking. I don’t use the word racist to depict just anybody that I feel personally are trying to Image result for black people and copsharm us; and I recognize that not everybody is out to get us. And maybe those cops did see something they needed to harp on; but for them to call it “random” is where I see some nonsense. They could’ve articulated the nature of the stop and actually given a reasonable answer. The man’s shirt was just the icing on a cake of ideas that people who are sun kissed have swarming in their heads in moments like those and it’s very disheartening. I can’t say that the same situation would’ve made the same bad impression on someone who isn’t sun kissed, and that makes me care for these kinds of situations less than I care for the All Lives Matter movement.

We know that all lives matter, that isn’t something that I nor anybody with sense can really debate. Historically though, racist and bigoted people did not treat sun kissed people as if their lives mattered, unless we were the ones building the cotton industry for Image result for black panther partyfree. Unless we were the ones filling up factory positions for cheap and keeping money in their pockets so their future generations didn’t have to worry about things like tuition. And it is a damn shame that we even have to make a campaign for our own lives and then have it thrown back at us by the same people who didn’t think we mattered. That’s exactly how the Black Panthers became synonymous with rebellion; because little do people know that they had to arm themselves to fight off police brutality.

To me and my thick skin, I could care less if someone doesn’t think I count. But if I see the tears in my sun kissed brothers and sisters’ eyes, that’s when I feel like wearing black leather and stepping up to point guns at the people who point guns at us, and that’s just pure honesty. And things like this piss me off to no end: “When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished.  If however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property.”  It brings me to question that moral compass on which humans rely; I wonder if disregarding others is just the natural thing to do and if I should be that way as well just to feel totally human. But for my own sanity I have to try to understand. And even with a passion for grasping the reason behind actions, I stand firm in my resolve, and if anybody on this planet earth tries to raise a rod to my back and scar my sun kissed skin out of ignorant hate, for my ancestors, I will give that person hell on earth.

Image result for melanin

Let’s be clear, I make no assumption that those cops or anybody in particular is against us. Even if they are, respect and understanding is absolutely non-negotiable for me so I remain respectful in all given situations. But to say that means to confront my own emotions and keep them in check, so I cannot wear that black leather and pack heat every time somebody brings tears to my family’s eye. I choose to take my time in understanding why those individuals feel the way that they do and how I can properly A) avoid them, or B) change their perspective of us. Their presence doesn’t negate the presence of genuine people, like Sydney Mingle for example. I could choose to see her blue eyes and straight hair as the epitome of the opposition, which admittedly, a certain number of us do. Or I could choose to see her as my homegirl and hold absolutely no negative feelings towards her because she has done nothing more than show me love and friendship. But the people who are open about how they feel our friendship is the work of evil reminds me that I can put the black leather on whenever I see fit.

Jason Todd vs. Dick Grayson

Way back, almost seven years ago, my brother and I had became friends with a kid named Saadiq. A couple times prior to actually introducing ourselves, we had seen one another in the neighborhood and when we were at school. He attended a school down the street from mine, so when my brother and I would stop by the Dunkin’ Donuts a block away, we would see Saadiq and his younger brother walking to their school. Time passed and we met, talked about our shared love for Bruce Lee and anything martial arts related, figured out that our houses were literally across from each other’s, and that friendship blew up quicker than you could imagine.

This is the story of how that friendship ended in hilarious fashion.

A few months in and Saadiq had felt like a brother to us. We frequented the courtyard outside of his house, which was visible from our bedroom window, and we had so many different mini adventures. He was very narcissistic but had a flair for showing off and wanting to help others show off too. The kind of person that you could tell had never met his match before, in dancing, fighting, smooth talking the girls in the neighborhood, or anything else really. He often called the house to talk to me about the newest girlfriend he had and how she was everything he ever wanted, I just smiled to myself because I knew a week from then he’d forget her name and move on; something I was not partial to doing. In every aspect, we all had the kind of vibe that reminds you of those old coming of age stories. One day in particular changed that era of peace forever, and that was the day that my brother and I met Thomas.

Tom (in the red shirt) was a this guy who had charm and a laid back style nobody could duplicate. He was over 6 feet tall and had green eyes, in all ways he stood out. He was playing basketball in the same park that I brother and I were at practicing our different martial arts. I was doing some capoeira that I’d learned and my brother showed me how to box. This caught Tom’s eye and he came up to us and asked where we’d learned. We had no formal training, but he did, and upon realizing that we were self taught, he encouraged us to exchanged numbers and we were training in Kenpo karate under him the very next day. Come to find out that he and Saadiq knew each other from way before, to the point that they called each other “brothers.”

Saadiq had not planned for us to cross paths. It wasn’t until a few years later that I would learn he didn’t want us to meet because he would feel threatened by us, as we proved a few times to be better at hand to hand combat than him. Needless to say, when we started Image result for kenpohanging out with Thomas, Saadiq felt some kind of way. And things got even worse when we began training karate at Tom’s house, bringing in more and more people who wanted to learn and become a part of the team. It started out with the 4 of us, and by the end of the second year of that brotherhood, we had around 14 guys all learning the style and hanging over Tom’s house nearly every weekend.

We trained for years to become as strong and goal oriented as the characters we looked up to in the movies. There were plenty of days where we would spar with each other, barely able to breathe, but we kept at it. Even a few summers ago when there was a heat wave, 7 or 8 of us were outside every summer day without fail, sparring and morphing our minds. When there was snow caked on the ground and ice crystalized across the park benches, we still fought one another. And after 3 years of fighting and having deep conversations about the world and who we all want to protect, there was a legitimate brotherhood between Thomas, my actual brother, and I. And Saadiq had slowly shown his distaste in the imagery. He eventually only came around every once in a while.

One day, when we all we over Tom’s house and after two or so hours of practicing, we all sat in the living room and joked and talked, like usual. The conversation fell upon Batman and how he ran his city from the shadows, something Thomas was always a fan of. He began to compare himself, rightfully so, to the Batman, and he named my brother Bane, for his brute strength and how well he held his ownImage result for dick grayson  against Thomas. Then came the moment I’ll never forget. He looked at me, and with a look of pride he called me Dick Grayson. The very first Robin, the ultimate protege, the one who would eventually become Nightwing and even don the Batman’s cape himself. I was more than happy to be such a strong person for our group, but Saadiq, who heard it all and didn’t say a word, left the house and we didn’t see him for another couple of weeks.

Time passed and my skills were becoming undeniably sharp. Me and Saadiq used to be equals, but I gained headway because he stopped coming to train, so he felt a little insecure about that. It all came to a boiling point when his little brother got hurt on a summer day and Saadiq refused to console him. He told him to man up and stop crying. I on the other hand, tried to help him stand. Saadiq got mad at me and Thomas told us to fight it out because this was something that was obviously deeper than the situation at hand. Saadiq put on his boxing MMA gloves and I refused to put mine on, choosing to keep my hands down during the fight. He got many good hits in, but when his little brother looked at me afterwards and said “Thanks,” I knew I won. I showed him what it really was to have peace on the brain and still defend what you thought was right.

Some time later, Saadiq and his brother moved away to California. We had squashed the remaining beef we had but I knew he was taking some feelings with him. At first it was only for the summer, but the summer turned to fall and then winter, and we were told later that the move was permanent. He was no longer around, yet my brother and I still trained with Thomas and developed our skills. The idea of a rematch did come to mind for me, but it would be futile. By now he has probably moved on and learned a staggering amount of new things, as have I, and a rematch would only call old bad blood to the mix. But, with that being said, despite the tiny instances of drama, I look back on our 5 year long friendship and feel happy that it happened. It truly was a coming of age journey.

Image result for batman family