DO NOT TOUCH
Why is this so hard for people to understand or comprehend? This is something taught to you at a very young age by your parents, your grandparents, your aunties and uncles, and or your guardians. They even teach you to keep your hands to yourself in school. And for every action, there is a reaction and many of us were taught to expect a reaction if you put your hands on someone without their permission. Most if not all of us were taught that we should expect a reaction or some kind of response, verbally or most likely psychically, from the person or individual that we put our hands on or touched without their permission. It is amazing after watching the NBA Finals, Game 3, that we still have to have this discussion with certain individuals, mostly white people, to keep your hands to yourself and off of other people, mostly Black people, especially if you do not know them intimately or personally. It is as if white people do not understand the concept that it is wrong and unacceptable to go around putting your hands on someone else’s person. Do not touch my body or my hair. Do not assume or have the audacity to believe that purchasing a ticket, regardless of cost, or even if you are part of the team’s ownership group, that that somehow gives you the right, the authority to physically touch me or even verbally abuse me. White people seem to have this notion that black people are their property and that we should be okay with you putting your nasty dirty hands on our bodies and without our permission. That thought process takes a special kind of uppitiness, arrogance, ignorance, and shittiness to think, to believe, that you have the right, the authority to put your hands on me or any Black person you just happen to see walking down the street or minding their own business or just so happen to be playing a professional sport and at their workplace. Why do white people believe that it is their right to put their hands on Black people at all? Why do white people believe that Black people should accept them putting their unwashed and uncleaned hands on our bodies? Whatever happened to the notion and idea of respecting a person’s personal space which yes, includes their bodies and their hair? No, you do not have the right to put your hands on Black people at all without their permission and no I do not care about how much you spent on a ticket or if you have an opinion about my skin tone or about my hair. There are boundaries that we should not cross and those boundaries should be respected. White people have a long way to go when it comes to them understanding just how arrogant, obnoxious, and disrespectful many of them are when it comes to their hands and where they so casually like to place them. And that white fan, a part-owner of the Golden State Warriors, that so rudely shoved Kyle Lowry, a player for the Toronto Raptors in game 3 of the NBA finals just proves that money, no matter how much of it you have, does not buy you class, ethics, common sense or decency.