Growing up, I didn't always understand why my parents made me follow the rules that they did. Like, why did I really have to mow the lawn? Why was homework really that important? Why couldn't I put jelly beans in my oatmeal?
Ketika tumbuh dewasa, saya tidak selalu mengerti mengapa orang tua memaksa saya mematuhi aturan mereka. Seperti, kenapa sih saya harus memotong rumput? Kenapa PR begitu pentingnya? Kenapa saya tidak boleh menaruh Jelly bean dalam oatmeal saya?
My childhood was abound with questions like this. Normal things about being a kid and realizing that sometimes, it was best to listen to my parents even when I didn't exactly understand why. And it's not that they didn't want me to think critically. Their parenting always sought to reconcile the tension between having my siblings and I understand the realities of the world, while ensuring that we never accepted the status quo as inevitable.
Masa kecil saya dipenuhi hal seperti ini. Hal yang lumrah bagi anak kecil yang menyadari bahwa kadang kala lebih baik mematuhi saja orang tua kita walau kita tak tahu alasannya. Dan bukan karena mereka tak mau saya berpikir kritis. Mereka selalu mencari jalan tengah antara kesadaran saya dan saudara atas kenyataan di dunia ini dengan memastikan bahwa kami tidak menganggap status quo itu mutlak.
I came to realize that this, in and of itself, was a very purposeful form of education. One of my favorite educators, Brazilian author and scholar Paulo Freire, speaks quite explicitly about the need for education to be used as a tool for critical awakening and shared humanity. In his most famous book, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," he states, "No one can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so."
Saya menyadari bahwa hal ini, dalam dan akan penerapannya, merupakan bentuk pendidikan yang sangat bermakna. Salah satu pengajar kesukaan saya, Penulis dan sarjana Brasil, Paulo Freire mengungkapkan dengan tegas perlunya pendidikan sebagai sarana pembangkit kesadaran kritis dan penyebar kemanusiaan. Dalam bukunya, "Pengajaran Bagi Orang Tertindas" dia mengatakan. "Tidak ada yang bisa jadi manusia seutuhnya selama dia menghalangi orang lain untuk itu."
I've been thinking a lot about this lately, this idea of humanity, and specifically, who in this world is afforded the privilege of being perceived as fully human. Over the course of the past several months, the world has watched as unarmed black men, and women, have had their lives taken at the hands of police and vigilante. These events and all that has transpired after them have brought me back to my own childhood and the decisions that my parents made about raising a black boy in America that growing up, I didn't always understand in the way that I do now.
Saya banyak memikirkan hal ini, ide tentang kemanusiaan, dan khususnya, siapa di dunia ini yang mendapat keleluasaan untuk dianggap sebagai manusia utuh. Selama beberapa bulan terakhir, dunia menyaksikan pria dan wanita kulit hitam yang tak bersenjata, telah kehilangan nyawa mereka di tangan polisi dan penjahat. Kejadian ini serta kejadian lainnya yang mengikuti membawa saya kembali ke masa kecil saya serta cara orang tua saya membesarkan anak kulit hitam di Amerika yang sedang tumbuh saya dulunya tidak mengerti seperti sekarang ini.
I think of how hard it must have been, how profoundly unfair it must have felt for them to feel like they had to strip away parts of my childhood just so that I could come home at night.
Saya pikir betap beratnya dan betapa tidak adil rasanya buat mereka, dimana mereka seperti mencabut sebagian masa kecil saya hanya supaya saya tetap bisa pulang ke rumah malam hari.
For example, I think of how one night, when I was around 12 years old, on an overnight field trip to another city, my friends and I bought Super Soakers and turned the hotel parking lot into our own water-filled battle zone. We hid behind cars, running through the darkness that lay between the streetlights, boundless laughter ubiquitous across the pavement. But within 10 minutes, my father came outside, grabbed me by my forearm and led me into our room with an unfamiliar grip. Before I could say anything, tell him how foolish he had made me look in front of my friends, he derided me for being so naive. Looked me in the eye, fear consuming his face, and said, "Son, I'm sorry, but you can't act the same as your white friends. You can't pretend to shoot guns. You can't run around in the dark. You can't hide behind anything other than your own teeth."
Contoh, saya ingat pada suatu malam, saat saya berusia 12 tahun, dalam suatu perjalanan ke luar kota, saya dan teman teman membeli pistol air dan menjadikan tempat parkir sebagai arena tempur air kami. Kami bersembunyi di belakang mobil, bersembunyi dalam kegelapan di antara lampu jalan, tawa riang kami terdengar jelas di sepanjang jalan. Dan 10 menit kemudian, ayah keluar, mencengkeram lengan saya dan menyeret saya ke kamar kami dengan cengkeraman yang aneh. Sebelum saya sempat berbicara, betapa dia telah membuatku terlihat konyol di depan temanku, dia mencela betapa bodohnya diriku. Menatap mataku, rasa takut terlihat jelas di wajahnya, dan katanya, "Nak, maafkan aku, tapi kau tak boleh seperti temanmu yang berkulit putih. Jangan bermain tembak-tembakan. Jangan berkeliaran di kegelapan. Jangan bersembunyi selain di belakang gigimu."
I know now how scared he must have been, how easily I could have fallen into the empty of the night, that some man would mistake this water for a good reason to wash all of this away.
Aku tahu betapa takutnya dia saat itu, betapa mudahnya aku jadi korban malam itu, jika ada orang yang menyangka bahwa mainanku sebagai alasan untuk menghabisiku.
These are the sorts of messages I've been inundated with my entire life: Always keep your hands where they can see them, don't move too quickly, take off your hood when the sun goes down. My parents raised me and my siblings in an armor of advice, an ocean of alarm bells so someone wouldn't steal the breath from our lungs, so that they wouldn't make a memory of this skin. So that we could be kids, not casket or concrete. And it's not because they thought it would make us better than anyone else it's simply because they wanted to keep us alive.
Inilah pesan yang saya terima selama hidup saya: Letakkan tanganmu agar bisa terlihat selalu, jangan bergerak terlalu cepat lepaskan tudungmu setelah matahari terbenam. Orang tuaku membesarkanku dan saudaraku dalam benteng nasehat, lautan peringatan supaya tak seorangpun akan mencuri nafas kami, supaya mereka tak mengingat warna kulit ini. Agar kami tetap jadi anak anak, bukan mayat. Dan bukanlah mereka ingin kami lebih baik dari anak yang lain tapi hanya agar kami tetap hidup.
All of my black friends were raised with the same message, the talk, given to us when we became old enough to be mistaken for a nail ready to be hammered to the ground, when people made our melanin synonymous with something to be feared.
Semua teman kulit hitamku tumbuh dengan pesan yang sama, ruang bicara, yang diberikan jika kami cukup tua dianggap sebagai paku yang siap dipalu ke tanah, ketika orang menyamakan warna kulit kami sesuatu yang patut ditakuti.
But what does it do to a child to grow up knowing that you cannot simply be a child? That the whims of adolescence are too dangerous for your breath, that you cannot simply be curious, that you are not afforded the luxury of making a mistake, that someone's implicit bias might be the reason you don't wake up in the morning.
Tapi apa akibatnya bagi seorang anak kecil yang tumbuh dengan anggapan bahwa anda tak bisa jadi sekedar anak kecil? Bahwa menjadi remaja terlalu berbahaya bagi hidupmu, anda tidak boleh terlalu ingin tahu dan anda tidak boleh berbuat salah, dan opini samar dari seseorang saja dapat menyebabkan anda tak dapat bangun esok pagi.
But this cannot be what defines us. Because we have parents who raised us to understand that our bodies weren't meant for the backside of a bullet, but for flying kites and jumping rope, and laughing until our stomachs burst. We had teachers who taught us how to raise our hands in class, and not just to signal surrender, and that the only thing we should give up is the idea that we aren't worthy of this world. So when we say that black lives matter, it's not because others don't, it's simply because we must affirm that we are worthy of existing without fear, when so many things tell us we are not. I want to live in a world where my son will not be presumed guilty the moment he is born, where a toy in his hand isn't mistaken for anything other than a toy.
Tapi ini tak boleh jadi cap kami. Karena orang tua kami mengajarkan kami untuk memahami bahwa tubuh kami bukanlah untuk jadi sasaran tembak, tapi untuk bermain layangan dan tali, dan tertawa sampai perut kami sakit. Guru mengajarkan kami mengacungkan tangan di kelas bukan sebagai tanda menyerah, dan satu satunya hal yang harus kami buang adalah anggapan bahwa kami tak layak hidup didunia Jadi saat kami bilang nyawa kami penting, bukannya yang lain tidak. cuma memastikan bahwa kami pun layak hidup tanpa rasa takut saat orang lain beranggapan kami tak layak. Saya ingin dunia dimana anak saya tidak dianggap bersalah begitu dia dilahirkan, ketika mainan di tangannya tidak dianggap bukan mainan.
And I refuse to accept that we can't build this world into something new, some place where a child's name doesn't have to be written on a t-shirt, or a tombstone, where the value of someone's life isn't determined by anything other than the fact that they had lungs, a place where every single one of us can breathe.
Dan saya menentang anggapan kita tak bisa membangun dunia yang baru, dunia dimana nama seorang anak tidak harus ditulis di kaos, atau di batu nisan, dimana harga sebuah nyawa tidak ditentukan oleh hal lain selain bahwa dia punya paru paru, dimana semua orang dapat bernafas.
Thank you.
Terima kasih.
(Applause)
(tepuk tangan)