{"id":100579,"date":"2016-07-08T06:18:06","date_gmt":"2016-07-08T14:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=100579"},"modified":"2016-07-08T06:44:51","modified_gmt":"2016-07-08T14:44:51","slug":"wp-oped-for-black-americans-this-week-was-a-nightmare-does-our-country-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=100579","title":{"rendered":"WP Op\/Ed: For black Americans, this week was a nightmare. Does our country care?"},"content":{"rendered":"

An editor at the Washington Post, Christine Emba, writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"download\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a black woman living in the United States of America, but I didn\u2019t grow up with a pervasive sense of fear. I was taught that things were getting better \u2014 they\u2019re always getting better. Look, we\u2019ve moved past slavery, past Jim Crow. The civil rights movement worked!<\/p>\n

Thinking back, perhaps my parents \u2014 like all black parents \u2014 were less convinced than I was, and rightly so. Immigrants from Nigeria, a pharmacist and a nurse, they were middle-class professionals obsessed with our educations and far more interested in pushing us to get ahead rather than in looking back.<\/p>\n

Yet I still listened to them instruct my brother the day he received his driver\u2019s license: Drive slow; don\u2019t be outside at night; if you\u2019re stopped by the police, always keep your hands in view; never raise your voice; don\u2019t talk back; you\u2019re not like everyone else; this country isn\u2019t safe for you; you should always be on your guard.<\/p>\n

And even as the younger, female child, I received my own warnings. Dress well; speak correctly; don\u2019t ever give anyone cause to suspect you; know that you need to be twice as good as anyone else. The threat of bodily harm was reduced, but the implication that certain structures couldn\u2019t be counted on to serve me, and that I would need to work harder than my white peers to stay safe, was not.<\/p>\n

Despite all that, I assumed the best \u2014 sure, it\u2019s unfair, sure, it\u2019s limiting, but hey, we\u2019ll eventually be able to stop worrying. After all, things are improving.<\/p>\n

The problem is, they\u2019re not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An editor at the Washington Post, Christine Emba, writes: I\u2019m a black woman living in the United States of America, but I didn\u2019t grow up with a pervasive sense of fear. I was taught that things were getting better \u2014 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blacks"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100579"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100583,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100579\/revisions\/100583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}