We Shouldn't Still Be Black Mr.Garner

We are stubborn enough to love our ancestors and the work they did.
I went to school with the children of immigrants who could barely speak a word of English.
Those children, however, learned to speak English with no discernible accent at all within a few
years of first grade. Black youngsters,however, hundreds of years later, are slow, slow to abandon
the speech styles of their ancestors.
Those students  I attended school with, years later, at our five year high school reunion, told me I sounded more like them than like other black people they'd met.
I replied, "Not exactly."
I began to use the Midwest accent I heard everyday at university. I started with: "Yuse guys..."
I didn't get too far with that. They cried uncle right away, asking me to stop.
I absolutely loved the way my grandma spoke, both my grandmas.
Though they were raised in the south, I could here they didn't sound like southern whites.
One of my favorite poems in all the world is 'When Dey 'Listed Colored Soldiers', by
Paul Laurence Dunbar. For me, that's American English. I remember telling one of my professors at university that even though many of us are losing our accents, our ancestors were the original citizens taught to speak English by Americans. He couldn't disagree.
Our ancestors have been in the new world, working, since 1619.
Not many can trace their heritage back 400 years.
Yet here we are, still, judged, tortured, assaulted, killed by people claiming the right to do it all.
Mr. Eric Garner was black, and this may be why police and EMS ignored his distress.
Reluctantly, we have to accept we have another martyr to the freedoms our ancestors worked to
achieve for us. We shouldn't still have to deal with martyrdom in an advances western society.
I thank the man who was not a minority, but who made the video public. The more people who
acknowledge injustice, the easier it is to root it out of our lives.
My heart goes out To Eric Garner's family, and to any other family or group in America who may
have lost a loved one for selling a cigarette.