As everyone can see, I am black. Not yet considered a man by most, but I am a black male in America. For the first 10 years of my existence, I was oblivious to the hardships and passive-aggressive practices, or even full-on aggressive practices of some people towards blacks in America. That lack of knowledge isn’t really possible in this time period of America. Hundreds of black men are being shot and killed on the news for doing seemingly nothing, and most of them result in no repercussions for the police officers who shot them. In modern-day America, information on your surroundings is almost impossible not to find through social media. Not having this information is also very dangerous for a person in my demographic group. Social media plays the largest role in spreading and codifying information. The ability to transfer a set of text and information has been provided to most people in America. Some people don’t understand the validity and severity of their words on the Internet. The increase in speed of a message being sent is an advantage and a disadvantage. We are now able to talk to the whole world with a push of a button, but that makes the thoroughness and thought process behind each word dwindle. People can say whatever they want, no matter the vulgarity of the message.

The messages from black people in defense of my race can be wrongfully interpreted and seen as aggressive hate speech and an identifying factor of my race. Simply the fact that I look “like” some of the people that commit to this aggressive lifestyle doesn’t mean I am one of them. Having the slightest similarities to those individuals that died can put me in many different terrible situations, so I must live a life of paranoia and fear to stay safe. I am seen as a person of criminal intent because people like me get too vocal and, usually white, people perceive the “Black Lives Matter” groups words as hate speech towards them. Some are willing to act on their interpretations in a way that reflects the aggressive words that they heard on people like me. Even though I am the complete opposite of what black men in America are perceived as emotionally and mentally by predominantly white people, some are afraid to approach me as a black guy with dreads.

I have never really been approached aggressively when it comes to race; mostly passive acts like the snap of a car door’s locking mechanism as I walk by, or the haste of each step when I walk behind someone in a park. The worst one, in my opinion, would be when I am walking on a path in a park, and the people walking in my direction jet subtly, or at least they think it is subtle, to the edge of the paved path, or when they decide to continue their brisk movement off of the path simply because I am on it. I’ve gotten upset about these interactions because another human being feels the need to alter their life and “steer clear” of me enough to move as far away from as possible on a path that wouldn’t benefit them at all, but I still embrace this common prejudice and use my appearance of someone that would frighten a 35-year-old white woman walking home by herself from a corner store, to study the world’s flaws. I am black male with a large presence to some below 5’ 8’’, and have woven tendrils that sprout from my skull that I see this world through. My appearance is seen as frightening to some and I am okay with that.

I have somewhat adopted this task of a social experiment of my interactions with the world to observe how people who look like me are treated even if I don’t act like them.

I can tell you of one time that I was able to collect some data for this experiment.

In sophomore year my friends and I, all of us black, walked to the Pizza Hut after track practice some days and eat as much pizza as we could buy that day, usually a positive experience. One day those laughs and giggles turned into blank stares and tense figures. We walked in and placed our bags down , as usual, and continued the conversations we were having as we walked in. Before we could all place our bags down, we heard was the manager say, “If you aren’t buying anything, then you have to get out.” with his eyebrows arched and a crippling malicious intent in his eyes. Momentarily perplexed by how arbitrary that statement seemed, I looked at my friends in somewhat shock.

“What was that all about?”I said softly to my friends that continued their conversation with little delay after his statement

“Are we buying something?” Solomon asked

“Yeah,” I said.

“Then don’t worry about it,” he said.

I later realized that many black males from Paint Branch High School often came into Pizza Hut to simply sit and chill within the colder months after school, similar to us. I understand that it was a possibility that we were like those other kids, but he could have dealt with the situation better. In turn, his actions made me feel even worse about the situation as if I did something wrong. The manager just thought that one group of black boys are going to do the same thing as another group of black boys that go to the same school. I was offended to a certain existent and went back to my friends to get ready to buy pizza. This interaction was passive and subconscious because of his past experiences as a manager, which I could kind of understand. Either way, it was my “turn” to buy the pizza that day so I walked up to the manager with about 30 bucks in hand ready to buy everything I could to simply counter whatever this man knows about black young men and change his perspective. I used our collective wealth to get multiple boxes of pizza. One of the guys in the group had an amazing idea of replacing the marinara sauce with BBQ. This is what made the pizza “good eats”; it’s what made our meeting as friends an event because we only ate like that when we were at Pizza Hut. The manager’s comment earlier just made the atmosphere of the day a lot less lively than it usually was, but we still ate as usual and had a good conversation as usual.

It didn’t bother me that this man was skeptical of people trying to hurt his business; it was the fact that his reaction was so subtle and subconscious as if it is second nature to enforce these rules on boys like me and my friends from Paint Branch. I didn’t want this man to continue shrouding all of the students that walk into the Pizza Hut with crossed arms, aggressive stares, and a pessimist aura. After we ate until we couldn’t eat anymore, we all began to clean up the tables, the chairs and the trash. Even the trash from groups that had recently left. We moved all the tables back to their respective spots after people moved them to accommodate for the 4+ groups per booth.

“Look, they cleaned up too,” A woman said,surprised by our behavior.

This statement also made me a little on edge, but it was understandable, based on the previous event. The manager watched as we did some of his chores for him; his arms began to hang by his sides, and his wrinkled face straightened out as if our actions were an ironing board to his crumpled dress shirt.

“Thank you, young men,” The astounded manager said

“No problem,” I said along with some other similar responses from my friends.

“I really do appreciate that” was the manager’s closing remark as we left the establishment.

I feel as though leaving relatively soon after we cleaned up gave the man a solid amount of time to just think about what he said and the kind of people he said it to. I hope he realized that not all of the black boys that are in their teenage years are always in it to get a hookup because it helped me find out my position in this racial hierarchy. I may be discriminated against passively due to years of discrimination being common, but I can continuously do small things like this to change how people perceive my race