I am not even sure if I am mad.

I am not even sure if I am disgusted.

I honestly am not sure what my feelings are at the moment.

Maybe it is a combination. Or a culmination.

Whatever it is, I am tired of feeling it.

Jemel. Roberson.

Say his name.

Out. Loud.

Jemel. Roberson.

Now all I need to do is eliminate the space and period between his first and last name and add a #. After that, I am sure you will have already drafted the scenario.

Black man. White cop. Dead black body. Cop on leave. The end.

I think I just figured out how I feel.

Sick.

I am sick of it.

I am sick of this story.

I am sick of this story repeating itself. And repeating itself. And repeating itself. Like a parrot that just learned its first word.

But I have been sick of it.

Since 1999 when Amadou Diallo was murdered.

This is nothing new.

It is why Colin Rand Kaepernick took a knee.

It is why black men and women teach their sons and daughters to fear the police.

It is why the #BlackLivesMatter movement was started.

The oppression.
The systematic racism.
The inequality.
The injustice.
The racial profiling.
The police brutality.
The assumptions.
The dismissals.
The disregard.

We can’t need help after a car accident.
We can’t play with toy guns.
We can’t pull our wallet out of our back pockets.
We can’t put our hands up to surrender.
We can’t sell cigarettes on a corner.
We can’t get pulled over for a routine traffic ticket.
We can’t run away in fear.
We can’t be face down on the ground.
We can’t talk with friends in the park.

And now we can’t even be a hero without getting rewarded with bullets and a funeral.

I am sick of it.

Jemel Roberson should be alive.

So should a lot of other black men and women. Yet, here I am, once again, writing another blog about why I am whatever I am.

I already know there are a lot of people who want to scream, “Wait for all the facts to come out! Don’t rush to judgement!”

As a black woman, I have every right to rush to judgment and I rarely have to wait for all the “facts” because I already know the story.

I know that no matter what I do, my sisters do and overwhelmingly what my brothers do, our melanin will always be viewed as a threat by some.

A week ago, we all mourned together as we started receiving information about a mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, CA. 12 lives taken. Another narrative that keeps happening over and over. Four days later, almost half way across the country, Roberson, a hero, is the reason there wasn’t another massacre to add to the growing list of hashtags.

Late into the evening, patrons at a club where Roberson worked as security got into an argument. After they were escorted out of the club, one returned with a gun and opened fire. Roberson, a hero, pinned down the gunman and had a gun to his back when officers arrived. Reports have varied as to whether or not the officer who committed the murder requested that Roberson put down the gun.

To me, it doesn’t matter if the officer said anything. We see another narrative play out here that we’ve seen over and over again, white men carrying out terrorist acts on American soil being apprehended, alive. Regardless of what the trigger happy “protector and server” thought, Roberson should still be alive. He should be alive based off of facts and not dead based off assumptions.

Y’all already know I stopped biting my tongue long ago.
I stopped trying to say things in a politically correct manner.
And I stopped caring how uncomfortable my words made some people feel.
If you are reading this and you feel uncomfortable, good!

Imagine how I feel as a black woman.
A black woman who has to constantly live in a state of concern for her brothers, uncles, nephews, cousins and friends.

I want each of them to return home safely at the end of the day.
I want each of them to live a full life.
I want each of them to thrive.
I want each of them to grow.
I want each of them to prosper.
I want each of them to fulfill their purpose here.

I’m also a realist.
And I realize that the word POWER is etched into their black skin and mine.
And it is that word that imparts fear to the power structure.
It is the word that threatens the power structure.
It is the word that imparts inferiority amongst those sitting atop the power structure.

And it is the word that leads me back to the korner to write this blog over and over and over.

Even when I am sick of it.