I am a feminist. The world I want to live in does not forego the humanity of boys.

Late last week, there was a recording of a Facebook live video making its rounds on Belizean news feeds. I initially did not see it. In fact, it was another Belizean studying here with me in Barbados who told me about the gruesome video. It was of a young boy being tortured by an older man. Cuts to the back, electric shocks and forced self-mutilation were what was described to me. I did not believe it for several reasons — because it was unbelievable news. I did not see expressions of outrage by the public on my news feeds. I didn’t hear anything on shows I listen to almost religiously, nor did I read about it during my regular perusal of news at home. Nevertheless, I went intentionally searching for this news piece and found that it was true. I also found the video and, like the online murder of George Floyd, I could not bring myself to watch it. This was worse, this was a boy, our boy, my own.

If I am going to be honest, I was mad at myself for not knowing. I was furious that the people who constantly reference PhD theses on their timeline about gender equality and the protection of girls said nothing and, by and large, are still saying nothing. There are entire studies that target medical professionals and their bias in their assessment of Black people’s tolerance for pain. The bias is that Black people feel less pain, can tolerate pain better than the next race, that mentally-ill Black people are deviant rather than sick and can bounce back from physical trauma easier. It is why many Black people are prescribed less pain medication and that when they are prescribed such meds they get it at lower dosages. You are Blacker and thus tougher. While the healthcare system in the United States requires a homegrown critique, I make that point because we do the same injustice to our boys, and where living while Black intersects with, and is compounded by, being born with male genitalia, you quite often do not hit a jackpot, especially while living in a post-colonial state. What we have done to our boys who sit at the intersection of manhood and Blackness, is to invalidate their pain and dispose of their existence, because we do not allow them to feel. Bounty Killer, yes Bounty Killer the Dancehall Warlord, said in a 2020 interview with dancehall phenom Spice that, “the problem is we send out police fu look fu bad man, but we nuh send out mentors fu go luk fu good boys. Dem ah mentor bad boys. It’s like ah bad boys them care fah, because state of emergency is for bad boys. Where’s the state of urgency for the good boys and girls?”

What do I say to boys in the hood whom the system does not give attention to unless they are raiding the homes of their grandmother at 5:00 a.m.? What do I say to boys in the hood who are doing well and still not being supported in that path? What do I say to boys in the hood who see their brother doing all that we say he must do to succeed and still doesn’t make it out? Who doesn’t get an ends unless he’s on the ends? I saw with my own eyes on Albert Street a mother tell her toddler son no when he asked for strawberry ice cream simply because it was pink. What do I say to him who, when he started to cry, was spanked and then told, “stop act like gyal?” A woman who carried a child for 9 months and then gave birth to him, a most painful human experience that could’ve killed her, told that very child to “stop act like gyal!” When a few become monstrous, we shrug and say let them all just kill themselves out in an act of self-extermination. It is an encouraged genocide because we are too lazy, too inhumane to see our boys as humans who need support to do well and be well. We do not talk about the men we have lost to gun violence because it has become so normalized.

I am a woman who wants to be given the right to live, but I do not want to forget my boys. We cannot continue to handle the mistreatment of girls as sensational clickbait to pander to our respectability politics and turn a blind eye to boys and the mistreatment of boys, who are equally human and who will become men. While the police did their job in detaining the perpetrator who tortured the boy, the police’s re-victimization of this young boy again proves the distinct and systematic targeting and abuse of young Black males which we know has been prevalent for decades in this country. Police brutality occurs with impunity in this Belizean society. Why is abuse so ingrained and normalized in this country? I posit it is another manifestation of the racism we refuse to acknowledge is a problem.

Belize touts itself as being a haven for human rights, but a young boy was subject to lynching practices and we said nothing but looked on, scrolled by, victim-blamed, Haha’ed. That boy was lynched on Facebook, and we said nothing. We probably witnessed a gang initiation, a “buck breaking,” and we said nothing. The patriarchy is on our necks, and the hard reality is that we are not safe and sound until our boys are.

“Negroes, Sweet and docile,
Meek, humble, and kind:
Beware the day
They change their minds!
Wind
In the cotton fields,
Gentle breeze:
Beware the hour
It uproots trees!”
¯ Langston Hughes

Stay Curious.