As a kid, you hear stories about what growing up should look like. It starts with a mom and dad who are significantly in love, work towards their goals, get married, buy a home, and, ultimately, have a wonderful family. These are expectations that make your soon-to-be future sound wonderful as a kid. Your teachers read books about it, there are movies, and you see most of your classmates have it. I came to an understanding at the age of 6 that I experienced everything but a normal life. Everything should be happy at this age, and you have no worries. Instead, most of the time, I was the kid who sometimes tended to sit alone when recess came around. Some days, I felt angry and upset and just looked out the windows and felt utterly disconnected. Most of this came from the fact that kids would tease me with harsh words. We would be playing tag or even coloring. I would hear, “We never see your mom,” or “Why does your dad only come to drop you off?” I could never explain myself because my classmates would never understand. Each day, I walked into school preparing myself for what the kids said but knew my family just wasn’t like theirs. When I started growing up, there were certain things I learned to accept the circumstances around me. This includes accepting that my mom was not ready to fully move back for me and my dad was still working towards things for himself and me while in his mid-twenties. Sometimes my uncle and grandparents had to push back on plans so they could help watch me. While this made me feel like a burden, I tried my best to keep pushing, but this is easier said than done. During high school, I constantly felt I was the root of everyone's struggles. It got to the point where I wished I was never born so life could go much smoother for my loved ones. Instead of constantly putting everyone's baggage on the weight of my shoulders, I did everything I could not to mess up and show everyone that their underachievement could be my future success. I made sure to get into the Running Start program, which I now will have my associate degree when I graduate this year. The Julius Quentin Jackson Scholarship will help me obtain my future in furthering my college education. The price of my education stands alone at 34,000, a payment that my parents can’t afford. My dad works a tremendous amount to help pay for my brothers and I. While my mom can barely get by. I want to promise that with this scholarship I will honor my commitment to my education. With this I’ll be able to help my Black community succeed and become the lawyer that I’ve always dreamed of being.

Law enforcement agencies for a long time have not been able to properly communicate and execute encounters with the African American population in the United States for a very long time. This has created a huge decrease in the relationship the African American community has with law enforcement because it leaves us scared, angered, and unheard. Since the pandemic, there have been multiple killings of African American people, and this caused the Black Lives Matter Movement. This movement opened up room for discussion that created uncomfortable settings for most people but overall helped the nation understand why it needed to be talked about. While this movement shed light and got lots of attention from social media platforms, it eventually started to become a topic that wasn’t mentioned a lot anymore. So what can people do to make sure to build a trusting, respectful, and safe relationship when there are harmful systemic issues that affect the African American community constantly? A new informative way that could increase law enforcement agencies to improve relationships with the African American population would be by having different sets of training. These trainings could consist of having de- escalation and bias and racism training. De- escalation training would help situations in where a police officer knows the sign of a possible conflict building up but instead of resorting to force they could learn to properly communicate. Bias and racism training would also be highly impactful because officers and other people in the justice system could learn what their unconscious stereotypes and decision-making that are harmful instead of helping. They could also try to have more diverse police officers to deal with cases of African American people so the community feels safer and doesn’t deal with anxiety that they might not be alive after a one-on-one encounter with an officer. Another way to add a positive change in relationships between law enforcement agencies and the African American community is by creating better platforms in communities. These platforms could be social media and newsletters that update areas that feel silenced to speak out. This could create an impact because people would be able to communicate their own needs freely and safely. As well as having history days that allow people to speak out about racial injustice they have experienced or felt with officers one on one. This will allow officers to understand where the community is coming from and leave room for questions and answers. Officers have to learn to understand these issues that have created trauma, which allows the African American community to try to lessen our interactions with them. Overall, if law enforcement agencies can understand the problems that have been created between them and the African American community, healing will start to form. Training, educated sit-ins, allowing African Americans to tell their stories in safe places, and showing how unconscious racism affects the job are all the start of great impact. These ideas will help the African American population have better relationships with law enforcement agencies. When this happens the more people will talk and share their experiences, creating an inclusive movement. It all has to start somewhere because if people can’t start from our communities, then, as a country, we can’t change as a nation.