It’s Time to Listen: “We Don’t All Look Alike,” a guest post by Carl Ellis, Jr.

Carl Ellis, Jr. shares a bit about what fueled his rage following Michael Brown’s funeral.

A quiet rage has been inside me since the shooting of Michael Brown on August 15 — a rage I kept under control as I tried to be objective and resist being manipulated by the strident and predictable rhetoric surrounding this senseless killing. However, as I watched Michael’s funeral, that rage burned hot. It brought to mind the senseless and tragic deaths of other young black men: Eric Garner, age 43 on July 17, 2014 in Staten Island, NY; Trayvon Martin, age 17 on February 26, 2012 in Sanford, FL. I couldn’t help recalling the horrifying murder of Emmett Louis Till, age 14 on August 28, 1955 in the Mississippi Delta. His body was fished out of the Tallahatchie River after being beaten and shot in the head. The image of his mutilated and bloated body is still seared in my memory.

Before you write me off for strident and predictable rhetoric of my own, you must know that these killings are not the only ones that have me incensed. I am likewise enraged by the murders of thousands of young African-American men in places like Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia, where the killers happened to be black. I have lost personal friends in “drive-by” shootings, simply because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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Part of what outrages me is the self-appointed and opportunistic black gatekeepers who continue to frame all of our tragedies only in terms of racism. By so doing, they cannot account for black-on-black murders because they don’t fit their “racism-is-our only-hindrance” scenario. Obviously, racism is an ongoing issue we face, but it is not the only issue. Surely we have a long way to go as a society, but most would agree that while racism is alive …