Black in America: My Journey is Far From Complete STORY: Ross Blanton PHOTO: Gianna Horvath DESIGN: Allison Nishi
I came into this world as a baby who never cried. Instead, I stared and observed everything around me. Even now as a 24-yearold Black man, I never cry around others. I don’t have that luxury. Being Black in America often means that we’re not afforded the same luxuries as everyone else. From slave shackles to prison cells, our light is boxed in, and our reach is limited.
Origin
My mother, Brenda, was born anraised in Gary, Indiana, once the home of Black prosperity and the Jackson 5. Myfather, Ronald, was born in Oakland California, the city that my grandparents and many other Black people fled to during the first and second Great Migration. Both of my parents faced hardships throughout their lives. By the time my mother was 16, she had lost both of her parents and has been working ever since to provide for her three younger siblings. My father had his own demons to deal with. He never explicitly told me, but it was my understanding that his father was hard on him, and that they had a strained relationship until my grandfather passed away in 1993. My grandmother was the sweetest little woman you could ever meet. She hailed from Little Rock, Arkansas. Now that I’m older, I regret not spending more time with her, or learning more about her life while she was here. I was born and raised in Hayward, California, just 15 minutes southeast of Oakland. Hayward is a special place
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to me. It always represented what the Bay Area looked like. It was a melting pot of poverty, real diversity, middle class people and hard workers. Hayward is where I met all of my childhood friends. It was the city where my parents found each other and got married. It’s the only place that I’ll ever truly call home. We had a nuclear family: a mother, a father, two children and a dog. The hard work my parents put in provided me with a real childhood. That was all but taken away from me on Oct. 5, 2010. Away from me on October 5th, 2010.
Loss
I wasn’t supposed to be here. Everything that I’ve lost on that day should have sealed my fate. On that day, my childhood was ripped away from me, along with my happiness. Everything that gave me joy disappeared. So there I sat, heart racing, gasping for air and tears running down my cheeks. My head was lower than it had ever been before.
