Someone asked me once before why I liked rap or hiphop music. Or why do I want to be black or something like that. At the time, I didn’t know how to answer that as I was still so young. All I knew was that black people just always seemed cooler. Some of my friends from my first tagging crew were black. They’re just funny and talented as fuck and I could relate to them more. They introduced me to new music and some really cool anime, and they made dope art.
Well I look back on those times and now that I’m older and know about the history of black people in the United States of America, I can say that without black people – particularly Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and other folks who fought for our civil rights today – people of color like me wouldn’t be able to exist here.
I was organizing and deleting stuff off my iCloud and uploading them to Flickr when I came across this photo from June 2020, around the time when the BLM movement was gaining traction, around the time when George Floyd and Breonna Taylor died at the hands of police. I think there was also some Asian hate going on in the Bay Area. Around the time when I was interested in Andrew Yang too.
Life gets heavier as one gets older, there is a lot to learn and unlearn at the same time and there is only so much information one can consume and understand. Be patient with yourself.