Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, The New York Times, The Huffington Post. It seems that no matter where you go, you will see protests from all around the country with one thing in common; A group of angry looking black people. In fact if you were to listen to the latest Hip Hop tracks or turn on BET late night and watch their discussion panels you would hear genuine indignation. Hell, the Civil Rights leaders of 50 years ago sounded just as angry as the people who get five second clips on KCCI or WHO. So why are they all so mad?
The day after Martin Luther King died, a third-grade teacher in Riceville, Iowa did an interesting experiment with her class. She decided to divide the children into two parts; the blue-eyed kids and the brown-eyed kids. The blue eyed kids were deemed inferior. They were taught about all of the contributions brown-eyed people had made to society, and that this made them smarter. She harshly reprimanded the blue-eyed kids, treated them as deviants, made them wait last in line, made them sit in the back of the class, took away five minutes of recess, and even wouldn't let them use the new jungle gym. At first the blue-eyed kids would resist, but soon they became reserved and timid. They isolated themselves from the rest of the class, began to behave badly, and scored lower on tests. While the brown-eyed kids became arrogant, aggressive, and performed better. After the week was up they all wrote their reactions to the exercise. Some of the kids with blue eyes said that the treatment made them sad, hurt their feelings, made them feel confused. Others said that they couldn't make kids understand that they couldn't control what color their eyes were, and that they really were the same as them. However, the most ubiquitous reaction was, of course, anger. Now imagine growing up in a school and being treated like a blue-eyed kid, but change one thing; you were treated like that every day for the rest of your life. This is, unfortunately for many black people, an everyday experience. You feel as if you don't fit in, that you are inferior, treated as if you don't belong somewhere. All it takes is one or two uneasy glances to make your palms start to sweat, for your heart start to race, for your mind to go a million places at once. Even worse is asking yourself everyday "Did this happen because I'm black, or did it just happen?" Imagine living in a community with astronomical unemployment, and the jobs that are available pay like shit and are even shittier to actually work for. Because of the economic strife, crime rates are high and you can't walk down the street, go to a gas station, or even sit on the stoop in fear of somebody choosing you to be the victim so that they can buy a meal at the end of the day. The police treat you like an animal, the court shows no mercy, the government is either deaf or doesn't care, your fellow people are killing each other or selling each other poison, the schools tell you you're stupid, you can't pay the bills, and God forbid you come down with something that requires a doctor's visit. Doctor King once said "As long as the negro lives every day in a major [economic] depression then every city will be sitting on a powder keg waiting to explode over the slightest incident." In Ferguson it wasn't the slightest incident, it was the death of an unarmed citizen. As it was in New York. As it was in Cleveland. In Iowa City it was an unannounced KKK statue sitting on the pentacrest that put change in motion on campus. What makes it unbearable though, is that nobody else gets it. Tweets like "The only thing that matters is your character and how hard you work. Nobody gets victimized because of the color of their skin." Has anybody ever told you that what you were angry about was stupid? Take that feeling and magnify it by infinity (I know math nerds bear with me). Its one thing to not understand, its another to tell a black person that they don't know what it's like to be black. And that is why black people are so angry. -515
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