Category: Speech Writing

Aug 31. 2020

So much is going on in the world right now, and up until now, most of my speech­es have been about love, hope and peace for the future. And while I don’t intend to change that, I think I need to get a lit­tle bit more seri­ous.

I don’t think in my entire life I’ve been as sad or as defeat­ed as I am right now. In the week of the Jacob Blake shoot­ing, I could­n’t fath­om the amount of hatred that I’ve seen on the inter­net. I could­n’t under­stand why some peo­ple just have no human­i­ty in their hearts. My heart aches. With every neg­a­tive com­ment, my heart aches. I was going to write a speech about how I get inspired to write, but I just don’t care any­more. I’m so con­flict­ed, I’m so sad, I’m so hurt. This move­ment has giv­en me the chance to give peo­ple who don’t have a voice a voice. This move­ment has giv­en me con­fi­dence that my opin­ion, my life and who I am mat­ters to oth­ers. It sucks that not every­one feels the same.

All my speech­es have been about hope for the future, but con­sid­er this one a PSA to BIPOC, white peo­ple and any­one else who is strug­gling in life.

Sep­tem­ber is Sui­cide Aware­ness Month, and often­times, we don’t con­sid­er the peo­ple who have been there for us or know how pow­er­ful the things we say to oth­ers can be until it’s too late. Every 12 min­utes, some­one in the U.S. dies by sui­cide, and those are only the ones who “suc­ceed.” Oth­ers are self-harm­ing every day, and all of those peo­ple are miss­ing some­thing in their life: love, con­nec­tions, hope.

More than 300 mil­lion peo­ple around the world suf­fer from depres­sive dis­or­ders, and that’s just the num­ber of peo­ple who are will­ing to talk about it. Many oth­ers keep their men­tal and phys­i­cal health a secret, either because of the stig­ma sur­round­ing it or because they’re unable to prop­er­ly iden­ti­fy the symp­toms. Accord­ing to the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion, near­ly 800,000 con­firmed sui­cides occur every year, 300,000 of those in the U.S. While these num­bers are not all relat­ed to depres­sion or oth­er men­tal health dis­or­ders, it’s dev­as­tat­ing to think about how often a per­son takes their own life due to uncon­trol­lable fac­tors, includ­ing acci­den­tal self-harm.

That num­ber gets more ter­ri­fy­ing when you con­sid­er that for every adult who dies by sui­cide, there are 20 more peo­ple attempt­ing it.

Now, look at the world today. BIPOC peo­ple are being told every day that they are insignif­i­cant. BIPOC are being killed because of the col­or of their skin. It sucks to feel like the world would be bet­ter if you were dead or if you had nev­er been born. I under­stand want­i­ng to get rid of pain and just be able to live. I have gone through that these past few months.

For­tu­nate­ly, there are a bunch of peo­ple who have not gone through that and hope­ful­ly won’t go through that in their life­time. But I implore you: Don’t be a part of the sta­tis­tics I just talked about.

Whether you’re white, Black, brown, yel­low, pur­ple, what­ev­er, please love your­self, espe­cial­ly in times like these. I know that under dis­tress­ing cir­cum­stances, it’s real­ly hard to lis­ten to those who are try­ing to help, but they have the best heart for you. It’s also hard to keep liv­ing when some­one won’t lis­ten to you, when you’re doing your best to be com­fort­ing or when you’re try­ing to help.

But please, if you’re in that posi­tion, don’t stop try­ing to help. Keep com­ing to protests, show your sup­port on social media, reach out to your BIPOC friends and fam­i­ly. Let them know you’re here for them and you believe in their fight. Tell them to con­tact a sui­cide pre­ven­tion hot­line, encour­age them to go to ther­a­py and reach out to peo­ple with prop­er infor­ma­tion and resources.

It’s nev­er too late to make a change. If you’re unsat­is­fied with the world we live in, let’s fight to change it. Every­one in the world agrees that the end goal is to be in a world where every­one is hap­py. As unre­al­is­tic as you might think that is, I’m going to keep work­ing to make it hap­pen.

Even if you feel like nobody loves you, or that you’re a waste of space, or that nobody would miss you if you were gone, you are gen­uine­ly more valu­able than you know. And I am say­ing this as some­one who has had these thoughts him­self.

We often don’t real­ize the impact we have on oth­er peo­ple’s lives, because if we did, all the neg­a­tive com­ments I see under many Black Lives Mat­ter posts would­n’t be there. We also often don’t see how much some­one loves and appre­ci­ates us.

Let’s tell the peo­ple we love that they mat­ter to us. It could save some­one’s life.

It’s wrong to lose so many peo­ple we care about, no mat­ter the col­or of their skin, because they could­n’t speak freely about how they felt. It’s wrong that so many peo­ple feel trapped by the racism going on in the world that they feel like there’s only one per­ma­nent escape. It’s wrong that there are peo­ple out there who refuse to acknowl­edge those who are going through tough times and refuse to acknowl­edge their strug­gles.

It’s wrong that when BIPOC peo­ple speak about racism, white peo­ple shut the idea down. It’s wrong that some white peo­ple refuse to step into the shoes of BIPOC.

But what­ev­er the col­or of your skin is, there is noth­ing wrong with want­i­ng a bet­ter life for your­self and want­i­ng to be hap­py. I may not be with you right now, but I need every­one to under­stand this.

So please, every­one, we need to get up and make a change in our lives.

Because we have that pow­er.

Because we mat­ter. Because you mat­ter.

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.

July 20. 2020

The term “Karen” is a very pop­u­lar name for peo­ple who aren’t exact­ly the kind­est toward minori­ties. It also just so hap­pens to describe mid­dle-aged white women with blonde hair. Although I have strayed away from using this term as often as oth­ers, I often find myself con­fused about one thing.

A big part of this sum­mer for me has been lis­ten­ing to the Bea­t­les. George Har­ri­son, Ringo Starr, Paul McCart­ney and John Lennon have always been leg­ends. But their mes­sages about peace and love real­ly hit home for me. I was born in 2003, yet these words in their music have affect­ed me and shaped me to be the man I am today. How come these old white ladies, who were teenagers at the height of Beat­le­ma­nia, seemed to miss these mes­sages?

The Bea­t­les are the great­est band of all time. Usu­al­ly, stuff like that would be up for opin­ion, but this seems to be a pret­ty known fact. Although in their ear­ly days they were just some pret­ty boys with cool hair­dos, they real­ly became intel­li­gent and mature musi­cians. From “All You Need Is Love” to “Hey Jude,” all their songs preached peace, love and accep­tance through­out the whole world. McCart­ney even wrote a song titled “Black­bird” for Black peo­ple strug­gling dur­ing the civ­il rights move­ment.

So now the ques­tion is, how did these mes­sages slip right over these people’s heads? Dur­ing the ’60s and ’70s, the major­i­ty of white peo­ple were able to afford Bea­t­les songs—albums were a big mar­ket at the time. So it makes sense that not many minori­ties res­onate with the Bea­t­les. How is it that the peo­ple who could afford their music didn’t learn any­thing? That’s like going to school and get­ting a doc­tor­ate in math and not being able to do 1+1.

It’s crazy how the same peo­ple who hate the protests we are set­ting up right now did the same thing dur­ing the ’70s when they protest­ed the Viet­nam War. Their par­ents, just like most of our par­ents, didn’t love the idea of protest­ing against some­thing in our coun­try. What changed? Because now we’re fight­ing for peo­ple of dif­fer­ent skin col­ors, the fight isn’t worth it any­more?

Peo­ple are peo­ple. Just because their skin col­or is dif­fer­ent doesn’t change the fact that they are human beings. These Karens were being blind­ed by racism.

Dur­ing the ’70s, there was a huge hip­pie move­ment. A lot of the peo­ple who come to our protests act­ing dis­re­spect­ful­ly were alive dur­ing that time. It was a huge part of their youth, and unless they actu­al­ly lis­tened to their par­ents, they were hap­pi­ly involved. Again, what’s the dif­fer­ence? Anoth­er youth group is protest­ing what they feel is wrong with our coun­try, and now they’re say­ing we sound stu­pid.

Hypocrisy on top of hypocrisy.

There’s noth­ing we can do that can’t be done. There’s no one we can save that can’t be saved. There’s noth­ing we can’t be because we can learn how to be us in time. It’s easy.

All we need is love.