How to live with the constant threat of death as a Black American

It was in a cramped bar in 2016 that I told my friend that I would die at a young age. I’d had a few drinks, but I had a lot more anxiety. Anxiety for my friend facing felony charges from her arrest during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Anxiety from seeing history repeat itself the past few year: images of Michael Brown’s lifeless body in front of Canfield Apartments; the barrage of bullets that Dylann Roof lay on nine Black churchgoers; the 15-year-old son of Alton Sterling crying, “I want my daddy back”; the indigenous men I witnessed…