how educated we are

This has been both­er­ing me for a while.

About a year ago, I was at a par­ty where a girl asked why blacks were be­ing shot by po­lice of­fi­cers so of­ten. She sug­gest­ed it was be­cause the peo­ple were less ed­u­cat­ed.

I thought about it and said calm­ly, “I guess it’s all about per­cep­tion.”

She gave me a blank look and asked what I meant. “Well, let’s see, how did you bench­mark my in­tel­li­gence? What did you think I was like when I walked into this par­ty and in­tro­duced my­self to each of you 2 hours ago?”

She got qui­et, so I con­tin­ued, “You knew noth­ing about me, who I am or where I came from but you knew enough to dis­cern that I was black and that you could ask me this ques­tion, right? Guess what you also didn’t know … that I have a de­gree. I’m here just like you, and I don’t wear a col­lar that says ed­u­cat­ed … If a po­lice­man pass­es the quick judg­ment to shoot first and ask ques­tions lat­er, it does­n’t mat­ter how ed­u­cat­ed we are.”

She was a lit­tle tak­en back by it … but I felt I was be­ing hon­est and the con­ver­sa­tion has stuck with me. Even if peo­ple think that blacks are more or less ed­u­cat­ed, that should­n’t de­ter­mine the val­ue of our lives.

But you know per­cep­tion is 9/10 of the law.

My par­ents’ car broke down two months ago.

I went and picked up my mom while my dad wait­ed for the tow truck. We were on the way back to him and he called say­ing the po­lice had com­plete­ly sur­round­ed his car with their guns drawn. I was damn near in tears and my mom kept telling me to calm down.

That fear is real and it hasn’t gone any­where. I thank God every­day that he’s not a hash­tag.

Any­one who knows my fa­ther (or how crazy I am about him) knows he is all about the com­mu­ni­ty, do­ing the right thing, and be­ing in­volved in shap­ing the next gen­er­a­tion. The de­f­i­n­i­tion of phe­nom­e­nal. In their eyes, they saw a black man, sit­ting in a car in the dark. I say this to re­mind you, it is not just the trou­ble­mak­ers, drug deal­ers, and thugs. These are friends, fam­i­ly mem­bers, and neigh­bors at risk. I don’t hate the po­lice. I just wish that I did­n’t have to fear them tak­ing away the peo­ple I love with­out cause.

So to all my friends who be­lieve this is a joke, feel like the black com­mu­ni­ty is over­re­act­ing, or be­lieve it is just the ‘thugs.’ There’s much more to the sto­ry. This is real, be­yond real for me and my fam­i­ly, but it CAN change.
 
 

—tirzah mon­eè

Flom­mist Tirzah Mon­eè is a De­sign­er, De­vel­op­er, Speak­er & En­tre­pre­neur an­a­lyz­ing her world one step at a time. Copy­right © 2016 Tirzah Mon­eè. Foto by mehal­lo.

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