How Many More?

I constantly find myself mourning people I’ve never met. The eulogies are the same, but with different names. This time, his name is Ahmaud Arbery, aged 25 and was about to be 26 on May 8th. 

He too fell victim to his skin, the same color as the chocolate that his murderers probably like to eat. Only in the form of candy is Blackness palatable to racism. 

Ahmaud was just out for his daily run. Many people do this; even through this quarantine people are still outside exercising. But isn’t the perception of Black boys and Black men running that they’re ‘usually running from something’? 

On February 23rd in Brunswick, Georgia, Gregory and Travis McMichael were playing vigilante the way George Zimmerman did. Boy and man alike, neither Trayvon nor Ahmaud ‘could have been up to any good’ just running or going to the corner store. 

The McMichaels saw a Black man running in their neighborhood, which couldn’t have been for a reason as innocent and simple as him exercising. 

There had been a series of burglaries in the McMichaels’ neighborhood. I can understand being suspicious of people coming and going that don’t live there. However, would they have pursued him in a truck with trigger happy fingers and guns had he been White instead? 

The way a person runs for leisure and exercise looks entirely different from someone running from a crime, or their death. I suppose it all looked the same to the McMichaels. So yes, Ahmaud was a Black man running from something alright. 

They were the ones armed and dangerous. The McMichaels grabbed a shotgun and a handgun before jumping in their truck to follow Ahmaud. Ahmaud was armed only with the prayer that every Black parent has: that he returns home the same way he left out. Alive. 

What baffles me is how long it took for the McMichaels to be arrested. Two and a half months after the incident, these murderers were just arrested on Thursday, May 7th, and charged with murder and aggravated assault. This only happened because a video of the murder was finally brought to light. 

What baffles me is how William Bryan, the man who took a video of the murder, took this long to turn it over to authorities. He let the McMichaels walk around as free men for two and half months more. He let Ahmaud’s murder almost be waved off as “self-defense.” 

I’m not saying that he and his family deserve the death threats that they’re receiving. I don’t know how I feel about him being charged with murder either. Withholding evidence in an ongoing investigation? That is something I’d charge him with because there is absolutely no reason why he felt it to be better to just hold onto this footage of Ahmaud’s last moments for months. 

I understand that he was afraid in the moment the murder occurred. I would be too. Just taking the video was probably the best he could do because he put his safety and his family’s safety first. But what about Ahmaud’s safety? What about the family that Ahmaud won’t be able to create because he is dead? What about the goals and dreams and aspirations that this man had that cannot be fulfilled? 

We have a right to be outraged. Racial profiling is continuing to cut down Black bodies. How many more need to die before it is safe for us to be Black and American? Will we ever be safe in our Blackness? Will we ever be American?

Similar Read: Ahmaud Murdered… What’s Next? Who’s Next?

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