It was unbearably hot. Whether it was the heat or my growing frustration I don't know. I sat inside a train station in Wilson, North Carolina tired of starting at the same, dark brown, church like benches waiting for my train home from a summer semester at the Duke Marine Lab. It felt like the walls were getting closer and closer as every minute drug by; given that I was sitting there waiting for my then 40-minute late train to Cary, North Carolina, I relocated to the platform outside free from the encroaching walls. I read until I was interrupted by a booming voice telling me my train was now an hour and a half late. Growing bored and hungry I went to the sandwich shop across the street.
When I returned eager to delve into my sandwich I was confronted by an elderly black woman who was sleeping on the bench next to me. She wasn’t waiting for a train; she lived on that bench outside the train station. She asked me for half of my sandwich and I proceeded to give her half. She then went on to tell me her story over the span of the next three hours I sat still waiting for my train.
Have you ever seen despair? Have you felt it? No, you probably have not seen despair. No, you probably have not felt it. The word sounds foul coming out of your mouth, out of my mouth, because you and I very well know that we have probably never really seen or felt despair. I haven't felt despair, but I've seen it.
Have you ever looked into the eyes of a woman who was subject to gang rape, impregnated with a foreigner's identity, and then robbed of that life she carried? Have you seen the tears collect in the dark corners of a woman's eyes when she details that she still searches for her child? The slight quiver of this woman's lip, an aftershock of the earthquake that shattered her world, her heart. I have. That is despair. She spoke inaudibly quiet as if trying not to voice her pain in fear that it might bring upon more, as if not to lose another piece of her heart; getting up her hopes of finding her child, just to be cast aside by the people who have the ways and means to locate her missing piece, again.
We, who are naive to the depths of despair, wade knee deep in a pool filled with the tears many like this woman have shed, the pool that these people are drowning in and we claim we cannot swim, that we cannot feel the bottom.
When she was done devouring the half of the sandwich I had given her, faster than anyone who has eaten in the past couple of days, I went to buy her a drink out of the old and battered vending machine inside the station. She drank the lemonade at the same pace she had eaten the sandwich.
After three hours of waiting for my train, it finally arrived. As I got up to leave, the woman asked me for one last thing, forty cents. People in desperation ask you for 40 cents instead of rounding up to a dollar. When I gave her a dollar instead, because I didn't have any change, I said (without thinking), "How about I do you sixty cents better?" Sixty cents. The woman asked for forty cents, I gave her a dollar and managed praise myself at the same time.
Mindlessly, I put myself first, after thinking I had done such a kind act. Shared half my sandwich, bought her a lemonade, listened to her story, given her a dollar, and I found a way to ruin it with sixty cents. Some people ask for a dollar; some ask for forty cents after asking me if I'd like the plastic bottle the lemonade came in so I could get five cents back for turning in the bottle.
It may sound like I’m making this story up, and I really wish I were, but, the reality is, fact is often more unbelievable than fiction.
The issue that black lives matter is not a battle of rhetoric to be strewn in debate of interpretation. Black lives matter. That is a fact. There is a significant population of our country that is overlooked and mistreated because they are sent into a system where they are told they are worthless and we expect them rise above their situation. All the while, we continue to beat them down and remind them that they are not human beings, like they are incapable of feeling pain.
Something is wrong with the world when it is easier to get a gun than your next meal or drugs than a job. We leave people with no choice and blame them for making the wrong decision.Their voices evoke no change so their hope gets disposed, along with their lives, and your dignity deprived self offers the debate that All Lives Matter.
You are not wrong in this statement, all lives do matter. However, right now there is a significant piece of that “All” that is missing. The debate between the idea that All Lives Matter and the issue that Black Lives Matter is an argument of utter hypocrisy. If I have learned anything growing up as a constituent of more than one minority group, it is that equality has lost any meaning in this country.
Yes, for all you who propose the idea that all lives matter, you are right in theory. But practice what you preach, because your argument is incomplete without the fact that black lives matter.
