For Black people in the U.S. and around the world, there are devastating wages to be paid for living in a world dominated by white supremacy. There are also many painful realizations that you must face, rational fears that you will likely possess at some point in your life. Here are some of them:
That You Will Be Unjustly Charged by the Police
There are more than 2.3 million people currently in prison in the United States — and more than 840,000 of them are African-American men. The life blood of the criminal industrial complex is the plea bargain, which steamrolls many Black defendants into pleading guilty to minor offenses they may not have committed in order to avoid going to trial for more serious charges that prosecutors have admitted they often don’t have evidence to back up.
That You Will Be Subject to Police Violence
In a report by an organization called the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, it was estimated that a Black person in the U.S. is killed once every 28 hours by a member of law enforcement or private security. Black teens are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts. Past analyses have found disproportionate violence against Blacks, including a 2007 investigation by Colorlines and the Chicago Reporter in 10 major cities. An NAACP report on Oakland, California, found that 37 of 45 police-involved shootings were of Blacks, while zero were of whites. “Although weapons were not found in 40 percent of cases, the NAACP found, no officers were charged,” Mother Jones reported.
