The Black community is not a monolith. Although we share a collective experience—largely because society treats us as a single entity—we are individuals. We are met with the same suspicious looks and the same unfair judgments in stores, often labeled as criminals before we are even old enough to spell the word. Despite these shared burdens, our perspectives vary wildly. One way we think differently is especially when it comes to I.C.E. As the years go by, the Black community has found ways to survive, but with recent events in America regarding I.C.E., there are so many feelings flowing through us.
The Elderly Elder
When talking with the Elderly Elder, the feeling he has is one of helplessness. He has faced many years of seeing people who looked like him—someone that could have been his brother—being taken by the police, killed, beaten, and more. Now, he sees I.C.E. doing the same thing to people that don't look like him. With frustration in his voice, he turns to the next generation, asking what to do when everything has already been done and nothing has changed. To him, it is just a new badge and a new target. The only thing that has changed is that more people are seeing the killings and beatings, but no one is stopping it. "What are you supposed to do?" he asks. "How are you supposed to respond when I.C.E. agents and police come into not only your community but your neighbor’s community? How can I protect myself when that might only make things worse?" The Elder asks deep, thought-provoking questions for the Black community: How do we defend ourselves when society sees it as an attack? When the ones with the guns are the ones that are scared? He is left with frustration, looking to the next generation for answers—but can they really be answered when so many different answers exist?
The Newly Elder
The Newly Elder would challenge that helplessness. In their eyes, we haven't done enough as a community or as a country. They understand we always have someone on our neck, but they believe we don’t need to sit down; we have more to do. To the Newly Elder, we haven’t been radical enough since the streets of Selma ran red on Bloody Sunday—a time when the community was willing to disrupt the whole country to demand change. To them, the Target protests weren't radical enough. Yes, it was something, but it’s not enough when you still see Black people shopping at Target the next day. If the resistance doesn't cost us anything, they argue, it isn't costing the system anything either. To the Newly Elder, a badge is a badge. They see the same tactics used by I.C.E. to tear families apart as the same ones used by the police in their own neighborhoods. They believe that as long as one person is being hunted by the state, none of us are truly free. Organizing protests isn't enough. With passion and frustration, they state that silence is a betrayal. They feel like this country is theirs: "I know this shit is mine. I make myself right at home. I don’t feel like a guest." Despite what society pushes on them, they feel it is their responsibility to call out the lottery system for not investing in education, or I.C.E. for targeting another group of people. They feel it is their right to stand up against harm. They see the suffering and are impacted by anyone who is hurting. To the New Elder, nothing has changed—just a new name was given. Black and Brown people were, and still are, getting hurt, beaten, and killed.
The Young Dancer
The young dancer exists in a state of somber bliss. As the youngest, she is caught in a painful middle ground: she is old enough to feel the shift in the air, but too young to carry the weight of it. She still goes to school and she still dances, but her joy is shaded by a quiet worry for her friends. She lives with the terrifying thought that I.C.E. could enter her school and that, one day, a friend’s desk might simply be empty because their parents were taken away. She "knows" the world because she was forced to learn it early. Like many Black children, she has already had "the talk"—the instruction to always say "yes sir" and "no sir" to officers, to memorize phone numbers, and to do whatever it takes just to come home alive. She has been trained to survive the people who are supposed to protect her. When asked what should be done, her somber bliss fractures. The confusion takes over because the math doesn't add up: she was taught to respect the badge, yet she sees that badge hurting the people around her—not just people who look like her, but everyone in her community who is suffering. With a face heavy with sadness, she realizes the limits of her childhood and asks the question that haunts her:
I want to help, but how can I when I’m just a kid?
