Say it With Your Chest! Second to None

July 6. 2020

Ini­tial­ly, I came to Great Neck for one rea­son: to improve my speech. I was born with a speech imped­i­ment that pre­vent­ed me from speak­ing Eng­lish well. Treat­ment was expen­sive, and my par­ents had just fin­ished pay­ing for our house in Elmont. My mom worked two jobs to afford the house I live in now. I say this because I want every­one to under­stand I’m not a priv­i­leged Great Neck kid. My fam­i­ly had to work hard for me and my younger sis­ter to bare­ly get by.

I love Great Neck. When you love some­thing, you don’t just embrace its strengths and ignore its weaknesses—you want it to be bet­ter. You make demands out of love. This is my rela­tion­ship with my coun­try and this town. I did­n’t real­ize how racist peo­ple in this town were when I was grow­ing up, but it’s the truth. When I was younger, my mom always told me not to let what peo­ple said both­er me. Now that I’m 17, I can look back on hun­dreds of expe­ri­ences with kids, par­ents and even teach­ers that were offen­sive.

I’ve been told I’m too trust­ing, but the way I see it, I have a lot of love in my heart. I always try to see the good in peo­ple first, but hold­ing them account­able in times like these is essen­tial. Even though I did­n’t know it then, all the microag­gres­sions and racism that sur­round­ed me affect­ed my men­tal health. Now that I rec­og­nize these forms of hate, I see them everywhere—damaging my men­tal health and the men­tal health of my friends of col­or even more.

Regard­ing men­tal health, I try to fol­low my mom’s advice and not let what peo­ple say affect me. How­ev­er, it gets hard when:

• You’re one of eight Black kids in your school.
• Every­one expects you to act or speak a cer­tain way because of your skin col­or.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been told to stop “act­ing white” when I was just being myself. Kids and adults alike have a warped sense of what it means to “be Black.” They don’t real­ize that I’m a human being before I’m a part of any race. If I don’t act like NBA Young­Boy, Ice Cube or Snoop Dogg, they think I’m act­ing white. If I do act like them or any oth­er main­stream Black artist, then I’m a thug.

Black peo­ple get called names for doing things white peo­ple find trendy. Black girls wear­ing hoop ear­rings are “ratch­et,” but a white girl wear­ing them is “cute.” A Black boy wear­ing a ban­dana is in a gang, but a white boy is just cel­e­brat­ing school spir­it. They quote A Boo­gie and Tupac but dis­re­gard the mean­ing behind their words. They even go around school say­ing the N‑word like it’s noth­ing.

I want to say we can’t win, but we don’t even want to win—we just want to tie. Black Lives Mat­ter isn’t about putting Black peo­ple above any­one else. It’s sim­ply ask­ing for recog­ni­tion and equal­i­ty. Why else do you think we’re protest­ing? If there were true equal­i­ty, we would­n’t be protest­ing!

Even peo­ple like Michelle Oba­ma, LeBron James and Masai Ujiri still face hate. These are all promi­nent Black indi­vid­u­als who thought they had over­come racism, only to be dis­missed by the same peo­ple when they speak about their strug­gles. It’s dis­gust­ing.

I nev­er thought I had any prob­lems with men­tal health, but that’s because, as most of my friends of col­or would say, I’ve been white­washed. This isn’t about Black ver­sus white, and it isn’t about Black ver­sus cops. No one should be treat­ed as less than any­one else. We should all have an equal play­ing field.

I should­n’t have to keep telling my peo­ple of col­or to be proud of who they are because so many still think oth­er­wise. Peo­ple need to acknowl­edge their mis­takes and rec­og­nize that what they’re doing is dam­ag­ing and, sim­ply put, racist.

I love my coun­try and my town. I want them to be bet­ter. I’m not going to stop writ­ing until I see change. I can’t empha­size enough that it starts with us. We need to take this sad song and make it bet­ter. We must let love, patience and hope into our hearts. Then, we can start to make the world a bet­ter place.