CNN’s Omar Jimenez Could Have Been Me — Or Any of My Black Colleagues

Only syllables and circumstances made the difference

He could have been me.

Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.

I’ve been in journalism for 15 years. Early in my career, I saw my desk covered by Hillary Clinton TIME covers that folks defaced with disgusting vitriol and mailed back to us. I was inundated by racist letters I received about then-Senator Barack Obama. But I was 22 years old, Black and Latinx, and ready to represent all the people before me who didn’t have the chance.

When Tamir Rice was gunned down in a Cleveland park while playing with a toy, I edited stories about his murder — and the Black public outcry that seemed to fall on deaf ears — while I felt my heart split open for a 12-year-old boy. The night Trayvon Martin’s murderer walked free, I fired up my laptop. I swallowed my emotions and hugged my Black colleagues who were terrified for their children, and I put some of that pain on my shoulders for them. Whenever these situations happen, I bristle, I brace myself, and I get to work.

But this is different. Flipping between stories and emotions, taking rapid-fire hits to my heart, I’ve reached a breaking point. In the month of May alone, we learned…