Black Boy Out of Time

by Hari Ziyad

This did make me question why I was still paying for its services, but not enough to go through the hassle of trying to find an alternative in New York State’s utterly confusing health-care marketplace, which was supposed to be the solution to the country’s underinsured problem. It was not.

How could talking with one person heal the wound of systemic and generational oppression that affects almost everyone I love?

I am a Black person who has seen Black friends die, Black family members stuffed in cages, my Black grandmother beaten, and my Black body raped. I am a Black person who has seen these atrocities replay themselves over and over again on the news, on the internet when I turn off the TV, and on the walk home through my rapidly gentrifying neighborhood when I shut off my phone.

In high school, I wanted to legally change my name from Hari-Gaura to just Hari because it seemed more acceptable to white people who don’t like to pronounce long names unless it’s something like Tsiolkovsky, and I thought I needed to be accepted by them to find safety. Thank god I am past that.

To be Black and exceptional in this world requires seeing yourself not in your people but in whiteness.

Mr. Smith’s punitive view of tardiness is inextricable from the legacy of white administrators’ and educators’ adherence to school-disturbance laws and zero-tolerance policies, which all lead to the accelerated incarceration of Black youth.

Embracing avoidance was the central mistake of our relationship, but it has nonetheless remained a consistent crutch for my anxiety. It is the easiest way to cop out of managing this ever-present guilt of internalizing a critical part of myself as a sin. And embracing avoidance has created problems in all my relationships that followed.

The terms of our existence include that adults are to prioritize children’s well-being, but those terms are broken whenever an adult’s selfish pleasures are prioritized instead.

estimates that 20 percent of all adults experience rape or sexual abuse by the age of eighteen.

There is no single, simple answer to what a healing response might look like in the absence of prisons. But there are simple questions we can ask ourselves and our communities to find the answer for us in a given moment: Am I taking this action against a perpetrator of harm to perpetrate more harm against them? Or will it truly help me (and/or others) not just to feel better momentarily but to carry less harm and hurt into the world? And what can I learn from my ancestors and other Indigenous people about healing without reinforcing carceral systems?