Gyasi Ross: Native youth face being victims of white supremacy

Almost two years ago, I wrote about why Native people should be concerned about the senseless killing of Trayvon Martin. We should be concerned any time a person of color is killed simply because of the color of their skin. That’s what happened to our ancestors, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said—because we were (and are) seen as an "inferior race." I know there are many of our people who have accepted the lie/legal fiction that the Native people of this continent are not a race, but a political group. However, there are many Natives who are still racially Native with brown skin and dark features and who are very ripe to be, like Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, the victims of white supremacy.

Native Mothers and Fathers: your brown skin little Indian boys’ lives are in danger. Teach them that their beautiful brown skin and powerful long, dark hair puts them in danger. Tell your beautiful brown little Indian girls that they’re a target to be sexually assaulted just for being them—it’s a fact. Let them know that their attackers—both the boys and girls—will never be punished. In fact, they will be celebrated. Hold those powerful descendants of the first people of this continent close. Tell them that you love them. Every single time they go outside or to the store or to the mall, there is a possibility that they can be tried, convicted and executed of being too brown, too scary, too virile. "Their hair is too long." "They have too many tattoos." Treasure their time—their lives mean nothing to America. In fact IF, God forbid, they were to be tragically killed, there are many who would celebrate that death.

Little Indian boys like thug music, too. Like Jordan Davis. Little Indian boys wear hoodies, too. Like Trayvon Martin.

They are no different than these little Black boys who keep getting killed for being Black. Their crime is the color of their skin; they are tried and convicted in the blink of an eye. Now, I know that there are Natives who don’t like Black folks, and Black folks who don’t like Natives, therefore we see each other as "different." "It’s just those ghetto Black boys getting killed." or "It’s just those damn Indians getting killed."