This first quote is, “Standing by my mother’s living-room window, I tried, tentatively, to ask her why our world was burning, burning. She gave me a forbidding look: Boy, be quiet so you can survive, her eyes seemed to say.” His house acted like a safe haven but he couldn’t ignore what was going on around him. Him asking his mom this shows his fear and devastation even as he repeats the word “burning”. With all that is going on, where there people are out on the straight standing for what they believe, they are gaining nothing from it as the ultimate outcome is destruction and further devastation. He says, “The world around us was not the one we had worked hard to achieve but the quiet, degraded world that our not-country said we deserved. We couldn’t keep anything, the elders said, not even ourselves.” The system in America that promises freedom continues to keep the black community in shackles where they are still not free from the racism and degradation they face.  

A part of this article that stuck out to me is when he stated that he currently lives in a predominantly white neighborhood in Manhattan and the protest were happening, he a low flying helicopter and police sirens and scared for his life he asked his white friend to stay with him so the a cop in the helicopter would potentially shoot him if he was seen in an apartment in that type of neighborhood. Let’s say this were to happen though, that he got shot: wouldn’t it be odee that amidst all that “chaos” the cop would go gunning for him. This would solely be for the color of his skin. If you also think about it, black people are not the only ones protesting so it’s crazy for cops to continue to see color.