How Do You Feel?

Brothers,

How do you feel when you hear of someone being murdered or killed in a robbery and the victim is a white girl or white guy? Are some of you like me when I see these kinds of atrocities that I internally weep for the victims but hope that the "person of interest" is not a brotha?

Recently, two young ladies were killed, both from Georgia, one in Georgia and one in North Carolina. I have friends who are professors at both schools (Auburn and North Carolina-Chapel Hill respectively) and asked how things are going. They say it is kind of hard and a big deal on campus. I do pray for the fathers and mothers of these two young ladies, I know the pain of watching a mother bury her own child. Somehow, it ought to be the other way around.

How do you feel when you see that the "person of interest" is a black man? I can tell you how I felt. Being a child of the south, I know how it does not take much to raise the southern current of black man/white woman trouble. After all, the blockbuster film, "Birth of a Nation" was anchored in the notion that the Klan stood as the protectors of white women against the "foaming at the mouth" freedmen seeking to claim white women as some kind of prize. How do you feel when you see one of us being led to jail for the murder of a young white woman for "chump change"?

How do you feel about our men and our people when we find that one of us is at the center of the investigation? It hurts me heart...

In Peace,

Cyrus Marcellus Ellis