Throughout my life, I had witnessed what aversions to difference can bring about. A black boy’s body soaked with gasoline as if it was prepared for sacrifice, a black boy’s jaw so sore and swollen because it had been hammered by two older black boys’ fists, a black boy’s eyes fixed on the water under the bridge he was nearly thrown over, and a black boy’s spirit invigorating itself after the body it dwells in was broken. I was that black boy and those are my memories.
