'On a 10-hour road trip to start my new, job my mom talked to me as if l was heading into a war zone — and not just the current one, but one that would follow me for my entire life as a person of color.'
At the end of May, four weeks after my college graduation, I was in my family’s Michigan home, packing to move to a new city. As I folded laundry, taped boxes, and struggled to part with sentimental things, in the background were images on TV of peaceful protests and then increasingly violent riots in the city of Minneapolis after the killing of a black man by a white police officer.
“You know you can always come home,” she said, though my eyes were already on the future. “For any reason.” Like so many others who are quarantined at home, I watched two men kill Ahmaud Arbery on video. Unable to gather with others who had witnessed that horrific video, my college roommates and I escaped our apartment to walk 2.23 miles, a distance that signified the day he was killed, February 23. Our walk was quiet, pensive.
Following the death of George Floyd at the knee of a white police officer, Minneapolis was riven by often-violent protests.Starting a professional career would be nerve-wracking enough for any recent graduate. But I have laid awake at night with the weight of my responsibility. Black people are always tasked with a little bit more, held to a higher standard. Journalists don’t advocate, but reporters of color have a responsibility to be representative and inclusive in our reporting.
Further down my street, in front of both homes and apartment buildings were calls for an end to systemic racism, an end to violence in Minneapolis, and scores of signs reading “Black Lives Matter.” I unpacked my bags and smelled tear gas in the air from just blocks away. Helicopters flew low to the ground, and neighbors warned of the impending curfew.
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