(ThyBlackMan.com) There is something about a Black man that strikes fear in the hearts of many an American citizen. There is something about a free Black man as Cornel West would say that strikes fear into the hearts of many an American citizen. It is the kind of fear you can smell. The kind of fear you can see. The kind of fear that makes me want to drop to my knees at times in prayer when all I can ever publicly do is shake my head.
This fear is evident in the Trayvon Martin case. The document dump from last week now shows key witnesses to the shooting of the 17-year-old Miami teen changed their story; some in favor of the Zimmerman family, some in favor of the Martin family. We don’t know these witnesses but they now have taken sides with their changed statements in a case that has the potential to ignite the country’s racial tension giant into a rage.
The change of statements and the continued sensitive feelings about the case come as
Black men you are a target. For some in this society you are a target from when you first leave the warm comfort of you home for the first day of pre-school. You are the target of a system that out of fear has chosen to castigate an entire group of citizens who for all intents and purposes have never asked to be in this country let alone given reason for a Nation’s ire. 
Black men if you’re smart, then you’re too smart. Any type of success makes you too successful and in turn turns you into an uppity nigger who doesn’t know his place. Black men if you’re chill, cool, low key your mild manner makes you suspicious because you seem to go through life without the usual bravado displayed by most men of your race and that in turn makes you suspicious. If you wear a hoodie for warmth or your pants show the band of your boxers or more you’re a thug. If you have a mean gangsta walk and an Ice Cube snarl you’re a thug even though you could just really be having a bad day. If you do anything not sanctioned by some other group, make any move unauthorized or unapproved by some other group you are thus stepping over your boundaries set centuries before you were even born.
Black men are being forced to live in a pre-designed box. It is handed to them before they burst head first into the world. The box is the size of a prison cell. It always fits and if you ever deign to step outside of your metaphorical box of birth you are given a real concrete box of death.
Black men this is no way for you to live. How do you do it? How have you not broken through your box of constraints? How do you not scream in anger at injustices done toward your brethren daily? How do you not die inside trying to live inside the small confines of a box? How do you deal with the invisible shackles on your legs and feet, the unseen chains bound about your waist, how do you move, how do you dance, how do you dougie when shucking and jiving is even frowned upon? How do you break the mental barriers some have set up in blocks before you to show you are more than just a Black man but an individual worthy to be recognized on individual merit and characteristics alone and not lumped into a crab filled barrel where no one makes it out alive before scalding hot water is poured in to subdue the revolutionists?
Black men how do you do it?
I think I’d be dead already.
Staff Writer; Nikesha Leeper
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