When I was a little girl I had a tendency to wonder off. This resulted in me getting lost on more than one occasion. For this reason, I remember my mother pointing out a police officer to me on one outing. She told me that if I got lost I should go to them, tell them my name, give them the phone number written on the sheet of paper in my pocket, and they would help me. The police were there to help me. I saw that on television, I saw that in books, they came to my school and told my class not to do drugs. They were the good guys.

Now let's fast forward a few years. It's the summer time and I'm at a fireworks show. I'm with friends, and I'm thinking about my conflicted feelings about a day meant to celebrate freedom created in a time when not everyone was free and I notice the police officers. I feel my heart beat a little faster at first it's confusing, then I get it: their presence does not make me feel any safer. So what's changed? Sandra Bland. Mike Brown. Eric Garner Oscar Grant. Alton Sterling Trayvon Martin. Philando Castile. If I looked further I don't doubt I fill up this page with names. They're not just hashtags, they're people with lives and futures snuffed out.

I learned the hard way not to read the comments. And I wonder, where's the empathy? If you can feel for fallen officers, why can't you feel for the 4-year-old child who will have to live with the memory of seeing a man shot, and for the man who lost his life?

Of course the lives of police matter. The court systems and the public have a long history of acknowledging that. The same cannot be said for black and brown lives. A wonderful metaphor for the problem with saying "All Lives Matter" is that if there was a house on fire you wouldn't send fire fighters to every house, because all houses matter, you'd tend to the house that was burning. Yes, all lives should matter, but the system doesn't seem to be reflecting that.

I don't imagine that being a police officer is an easy thing to be and I acknowledge we need them. I realize that policing is not the root of all problems with race relations in this country, but a symptom. The idea that racism ended with Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, is a lie that needs to stop being told. Racism isn't just using the N word. Racism isn't just burning a cross on someone's lawn. Every person in the world has their biases, all BLM is saying is that, that bias is far more dangerous when your job involves a gun. That fear and the assumed guilt people have of black and brown people is dangerous and costly.

Let's compare policing to another difficult and life of death occupation shall we? Doctors. We need them. We rely on them. They hold our lives in their hands, sometimes literally. But their mistakes can result in funerals, so they are held to a high standard. When someone dies because of their mistakes there are questions, there is malpractice, there is morbidity and mortality conferences, there are consequences. Is it really so wrong to ask for the same with policing? In my opinion no one in any occupation from a janitor to the president is above criticism and critique.

My blackness is being scowled at by cashiers when I got into a fancy store. My blackness is watching those videos and thinking, "that could be my brother" or "that could be me". My blackness is dealing with young boys who don't want to wear hoodies, because they're afraid of being shot. My blackness is looking at my dark brown skin and worrying that it's a liability, not just for me, but for any children I may have. My blackness isn't wanting a lawless anarchy, but a country where I can trust police. My blackness is not accepting that selling CDs or being stopped by police has to result in death. My blackness is wanting white people who treat black culture like an all you can eat buffet, to show up for black lives. My blackness is wondering why a 12-year-old got seconds, but a militia that took over a government building got weeks?

I do not hate police officers. No one in the Black Lives Matter movement hates police officers. We're just saying that we rightfully hate police brutality. We're tired of being told over and over and over again we're worth 3/5ths of a person. Whenever I hear of an officer killed having lost my own father when I was young immediately I think about how much pain their family must be in. I send my condolences, I empathize. Those officer's families can expect the same from the rest of the world. The family members of those people I mentioned above must deal with their departed loved ones being put on trial after their deaths.

Not wanting a badge to be a license to kill, is not the same as wanting cops to be killed.