Stories of Us: Amir Odom | Stories of Us

I am begging Black Lives Matter to stop using black people like me to push a political game. The Black Lives Matter movement is literally telling black people that you're nothing. I'm Amir Odom and this is my story. I was born into a pretty middle-class family. I feel that a lot of my childhood pain and my pain in middle school came from just everything hitting me at once. You know this idea that this idea that there was a white man over me that's suppressing me and that's going to make it really harder for me to do things in life because I was black because that's just what I was told by my family and by mass media that you know being black is going to be way harder for you. And another thing that added to it was my sexuality because at this time I knew I was gay and being gay is something that I always just heard was a bad thing to do, a bad thing to be. It was just so much and the things that I would try to distract myself with ended up kind of hurting me the longer and even more. You know being black I would try to act blacker because I was always told you know maybe you're an Oreo, you're acting white, why are you black and listen to rock music? Why are you black and you want to read books? So I would try to act black. I would get girlfriends, try to hide me being gay. There was one night where I was laying in bed and I was just thinking about all the things going on in my life and I just said to myself you know what this is the time. I'm going to take my own life. It's over, game over. I ended up leaving the house. This was around 8 30 p.m. I left. I went to my friend Jerome's house. He answered, said yo bro love you, gave him a hug and then I walked about about half a mile over to my friend Chidi's house. Chidi comes down. I give her a big hug and so from Chidi's house I'm walking back home and I'm just really thinking about you know how am I going to do this. I want to die now. I said bye to the people, to two people who I just love so much and how can I, how can I just go and I see the cars and I'm just how you know I don't want to jump. I go home. I'm like I don't want to end up cutting myself anymore. I don't want to jump in the lake and so as I was walking home from saying goodbye to my friends, I went home and I was laying in bed and I'm like crap. Like I left to go kill myself. I didn't want to come back home. Now I'm back home. So you're back to square one. What are you gonna do? I'm laying in bed listening to Panic at the Disco, New Perspective. The song New Perspective was really just talking about I want to live a life from a new perspective. In my head then all I heard was I want to live a life from a new perspective and that was just ringing in my head non-stop because I did want to live a life from a new perspective. I didn't want to feel this pain and rage anymore. So let's just try this New Perspective gig. Let's just see what happens. What can we do? From that point on I made a pact with myself that I will always try to make it each day better than yesterday. While I was in college during the summers and the winters I was interning at a mortgage company that I worked for. At this company there was a boss named Matt that really became a mentor so to say and really became like a father figure to me and he showed me all the things that I missed out on my childhood. The more time I spent with Matt the more time I realized I was being lied to in my life and regarding the media. My personal life is not lining up with what the media was telling me to be. I'm sitting here like what is really going on? I go on a date with this guy I met on an app just to make friends. So we're sitting here at this date talking and we get into the debate between Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter and I'm like Black Lives Matter and he's very calm. Of course I'm the angry emotional one. Black Lives Matter you know even though like not all black people get killed by the cops it happens too much and you know we have to defend these black lives and he's just sitting there like doesn't happen that much. You like me I'm white you clearly like me and I'm like yeah. He's like well doesn't my life matter too? I'm like well yeah. He's like okay well you should just are you are you fine with looking into some videos and I'm like sure. So he told me to google Steven Crowder's Changed My Mind. I went home I watched a couple of Changed My Mind series. I went down a tunnel of watching the five-minute series from Prager U. I watched Candace Owens. I watched Charlie Kirk. I watched Brandon Tatum and my mind was just obliterated because I already don't like being lied to and all these videos are just pushing nothing but the facts. Black people are not dying as much as the media say they are and the amount of weight that was lifted off my shoulders I'll never forget that moment because I no longer saw myself as a victim. I always thought the cops were out to get me. I always thought I was gonna die just for being black and watching Candace Owens, Brandon Tatum they just pushed in me like no you're good. This is not the case. Context matters in a lot of these situations and when I looked into all these situations that the media was pushing it really wasn't what they said it was. Coming out as a conservative was 10 times, I don't know if 10 is the number, way more harder than coming out as gay and so being gay was just like oh hey I'm gay and then that was it. Being conservative and saying I'm conservative has completely rocked my world because it's like I'm not just in there in the left's eyes and my friends who are liberals I'm not just conservative I'm racist. How? I don't know. I'm homophobic. How? I don't know. They have a really hard problem with the things that I say about Black Lives Matter. The problem that I have with Black Lives Matter is what they're doing to people like me and it's a lot of people like me. The reason why I speak out so much about this is because I don't want another black boy to go through what I went through due to Black Lives Matter. I have a lot of friends a lot of black friends who've gone through the same things with cops and they're fine and they know not all white people are bad but you have Black Lives Matter pushing and throwing fear onto our black youth. The Black Lives Matter movement is literally telling black people that you're nothing you have to march in the streets otherwise you're going to die you're not going to amount to anything you're a victim march for us so that we can defund the police. Why are you taking the police away from the communities on which my little cousins reside in? They're great they're they're running away from bullets. I have such a strong disdain for Black Lives Matter now because I'm actually seeing what they're doing and what they're pushing forward. Again I was there. I was in the streets marching. I was in the streets crying. I was in the streets hurt. I am begging Black Lives Matter to stop using black people like me to push a political game. I am not your puppet. I am not your tool. Stop pushing this unnecessary fear and unnecessary idea that I'm just going to get shot down by the cops and it's not going to happen and you're making all these young black boys and young black girls marching in the streets thinking that their lives don't matter that it could be them. If I can go back to the freshman year of me in college the super SJW liberal was on the left viewed himself as a victim. I'd give him a hug and I'd say hey one look at your past. Pay attention to what you've been through in your life. You know this isn't the case. You know you are not a victim. You are a victor and you've accomplished so far. Why are you letting the media take that away from you? Looking back through everything I feel like I do have privilege and it's a privilege of being in America and it's the same privilege that we're all afforded and that we all have. We live in one of the greatest nations to ever exist that is so free that you can really do whatever you desire to do if you work hard enough and put your mind to it and I'm just thankful to be here and I love America. PragerU has completely changed my mind and in order to keep this content free and make it keep going please consider making a tax-deductible donation.