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?
Tokom odrastanja nisam uvek shvatao zašto su me roditelji terali da poštujem njihova pravila. Recimo, zašto sam baš morao da kosim travnjak? Zašto je domaći zadatak bio toliko važan? Zašto nisam mogao da stavim gumene bombone u svoju ovsenu kašu?
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.
Detinjstvo mi je obilovalo takvim pitanjima. To je normalno kada ste dete i shvatio sam da je ponekad najbolje da slušam roditelje, čak i kad ne razumem baš zašto. Ali nije da nisu želeli da razmišljam kritički. Njihovo roditeljstvo je uvek težilo smanjenju tenzije u shvatanju realnosti sveta između mene i moje braće, trudeći se da nikada ne prihvatimo status kvo kao neizbežan.
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."
Shvatio sam da je ovo, samo po sebi, bio veoma svrishodan oblik obrazovanja. Jedan od mojih omiljenih edukatora, brazilski autor i akademik, Paulo Freire, govori prilično direktno o potrebi za obrazovanjem kao alatom za kritičko osvešćenje i humanost. U svojoj najpoznatijoj knjizi "Pedagogija potlačenih" ističe: "Niko ne može da bude autentično biće dok sprečava druge da to budu."
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.
U poslednje vreme sam dosta razmišljao o ideji humanosti, naročito o tome, kome se na ovom svetu pruža privilegija da se smatra potpuno humanim. Tokom poslednjih nekoliko meseci, svet je posmatrao kako životi nenaoružanih crnih muškaraca i žena, bivaju stavljani u ruke policije i odbora za građansku samozaštitu. Ovi događaji i sve što se posle toga odvijalo, vratili su me u moje detinjstvo i odluke mojih roditelja vezane za odgajanje crnog dečaka u Americi nisam uvek razumeo onako kako sada razumem.
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.
Razmišljam koliko im je bio težak i duboko nepravičan osećaj što su su morali da skrate delove mog detinjstva, samo da bih se mogao vratiti uveče kući.
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."
Na primer, sećam se kad sam jedne noći kada sam imao oko 12 godina, na jednoj jednodnevnoj ekskurziji moji drugari i ja smo poneli pištolje na vodu i pretvorili parking hotela u naše lično vodeno bojno polje. Krili smo se iza automobila, trčeći kroz mrak koji se pruža između uličnih svetala, uz bezgranični, sveprisutni smeh širom trotoara. Ali za 10 minuta moj otac je izašao, uhvatio me za podlakticu i odveo me u sobu sa neprepoznatljivim stiskom. Pre nego što sam išta uspeo da kažem, i da kažem koliko me je obrukao pred drugarima, prekoreo me je što sam bio toliko naivan. Pogledao me je u oči, sa licem punim straha, i rekao: "Sine, izvini, ali ne možeš da se ponašaš isto kao tvoji beli drugari. Ne možeš da se praviš da pucaš. Ne možeš trčkaraš okolo po mraku. Ne možeš da se kriješ iza bilo čega sem sopstvenih zuba."
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.
Znam koliko je bio uplašen, kako lako sam mogao da padnem u prazninu noći, neko bi mogao pogrešno da shvati ovu vodu kao dobar razlog da ovako nešto spreči.
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.
Ovo su bile neke poruke kojima sam bio preplavljen čitavog života. Uvek drži ruke tako da ih vide, ne pomeraj se previše brzo, skini kapuljaču kada sunce zađe. Roditelji su odgajali mene i moju braću naoružavši nas savetima, morem znakova za uzbunu da ne bi neko isterao vazduh iz naših pluća, pa da nam koža ostane samo za uspomenu. Mogli smo da budemo deca, ali ne i kovčeg ili beton. Time nisu mislili da ćemo postati bolji od drugih, to su činili da bi nam sačuvali živote.
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.
Svi moji crni prijatelji su bili odgajani uz istu poruku, uz govor koji nam je održan kada smo bili dovoljno odrasli da nas smatraju ekserom spremnim sahranjivanje sa zemljom, kada su ljudi učinili naš melanin sinonimnim za nešto čega se plašimo.
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.
Ali šta to znači detetu da odrasta znajući da ne možete jednostavno biti dete? Da su ćudi vaše adolescencije previše opasne za vaš dah, da ne možete biti samo radoznali, da nemate luksuz pravljenja greške, da nečija izričita greška može biti razlog zbog kojeg se ne budite ujutru.
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.
Ali nas ovo ne definiše. Jer imamo roditelje koji su nas odgajali da shvatamo da naša tela nisu za metak, već za puštanje zmajeva, preskakanje konopca i smejanje dok nas ne zaboli stomak. Imali smo učitelje koji su nas naučili kako da dižemo ruke na času, a ne samo da objavljujemo predaju, i da jedina svar koje treba da se odreknemo je ideja da nismo vredni ovog sveta. Kada kažemo da životi crnaca vrede, to ne znači da drugi ne vrede. Već zato što moramo da istaknemo da smo vredni postojanja bez straha kada nam mnoge stvari govore da to nismo. Želim da živim u svetu gde moj sin neće biti smatran krivim od trenutka kada je rođen, kada se igračka u njegovoj ruci ne smatra bilo čim osim igračke.
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.
I odbijam da prihvatim da ne možemo da izgradimo ovaj svet u nešto novo neko mesto gde dečje ime ne mora da bude napisano na majici ili nadgrobnoj ploči, gde vrednost nečijeg života nije određena ničim drugim sem činjenice da su imali pluća, mesto gde svako od nas može da diše.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)