Deepak
16 Feb 2022
As I think about Black History Month and what it means to me, I remember another day in February, 10 years ago. February 26, 2012, is a hard date for me to forget. My little brother was turning five years old, excited to be of age to leave home and walk to our nearby elementary school. On the same day Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black boy in Florida, was murdered by George Zimmerman.
For me, this date represents more than a tragic loss; it represents the moment when I realized that I feared being a young Black male in our society. I remember seeing Trayvon’s image all over the news. I remember coming to school, flooded with emotions—anger, confusion, anxiety, deep sadness—all before 7:15 am that day.
In my school hallways, I heard voices whisper: “He deserved it…” or “Why was he walking around the street like that?” Only one teacher addressed what was happening at our school, bringing a sense of clarity and grounding to it all. My English teacher, Ms. Penny, shared a “Daily Show with Jon Stewart” video that talked about it—and the one line that hit me hard was, “He was walking home from the store, with a bag of Skittles and an Arizona tea.”
This was something I too did as a 17-year-old Black kid. After school, sometimes three times a week, I would go to the local liquor store and pick up a bag of Skittles and an Arizona tea. It shocked me to see that another kid, across the country, got killed for doing something that I do. I asked myself, “Why did this happen?”
