I was 22 years old when Trayvon Martin was killed. I remember like it was yesterday. A year later, I sat with a friend and watched news coverage of his killer, George Zimmerman, receiving a not guilty verdict on murder and manslaughter charges. My friend was a 20-something-year-old tall, Black man at the very beginning of his career as an attorney. I remember looking at him and thinking, he could have been Trayvon. Trayvon could have been him. We were heartbroken and angry with the verdict, but we weren’t surprised.

A year after Trayvon’s verdict, Eric Garner was killed. One month later, Mike Brown was killed and his body was left in the street for the world to see — for four hours — like he wasn’t a human being. Like he wasn’t a teenager. I’d known about racism for as long as I could remember, but something was happening to me. One morning, as I pulled into the parking lot of my job, a report came on the radio about a Black college student being physically attacked on his school campus by someone who referred to him using a racial slur. I don’t remember the details of this incident — partially because racially motivated attacks and killings seemed to be happening on such a regular basis. I just remember how the report made me feel. It broke me. I lost it. I sat in my car for the next several minutes crying uncontrollably. I’ll never forget that feeling of hopelessness, exhaustion, anger, and indescribable anxiety that I could no longer suppress. I always knew being Black in America would mean my life would be more challenging. I didn’t anticipate the mental and physical toll it would take.

Here we are, almost six years later and three years into the presidency of the most openly racist president many of us have ever witnessed. Things haven’t gotten any better. According to a recent study published by the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, on average, Black adolescents experience racial discrimination five times a day — often online. Sometimes this discrimination can manifest as a microaggression (like the time a teacher asked if they could call me Jamie, since Jameelah was too challenging for them), and sometimes it can present as outright racist behavior and language. For anyone paying attention to their surroundings and the news, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

So far this year, Salisbury University canceled classes after graffiti was discovered in academic buildings threatening Black students with lynching. A Chapman University student was arrested after he went on a tirade saying, “I hate n******,” and allegedly destroyed property. The video circulated widely online. At the University of Richmond in Virginia the N-word was written on the dorm name tag of a Black student, and in Florida, a white high school teacher was captured on camera using the N-word, saying, “It’s a free country, freedom of speech, right?” (He said in a statement to the local PBS affiliate that he detests the word and was trying to use the moment to demonstrate how the word has shock appeal and “as a short parody of who believes that this hate language is protected by our First Amendment.”)

A few weeks ago, details of an incident involving Jaylan Butler, a 20-year-old swimmer at Eastern Illinois University, made headlines. According to a lawsuit filed by Butler, who is being represented by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, in February 2019, Butler, a sophomore, was traveling on a bus with his swim team from a college championship tournament when the bus pulled over so the team could stretch their legs. It was around 8 p.m. near East Moline, Illinois. Jaylan snapped a picture of the road sign for the team’s social media account, and as he walked back to the bus several police officers approached him — with guns drawn. According to the lawsuit, Jaylan was pinned to the ground by officers while another officer handcuffed him. One officer held a gun to his head and threatened to “blow his [expletive] head off,” the lawsuit states.