Through Atlanta’s main character, we see the struggle of trying to keep our heads above water and making a way when we can.

Before Donald Glover became the first African-American to win an Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for his incredible work on Atlanta, prior to us grasping the brilliance of what he was bringing forth through the individual and collective narratives of the characters Earn, Alfred, Darius and Van, and without having presented one episode of the show that would quickly become one of greatest dramatic and comedic works of art to ever grace a television screen, Glover said, “The thesis with this show was to show people what it’s like to be black, and you can’t write that down. You have to feel it.”

And now that Season 2 is a wrap after last week’s finale, we have a fuller understanding of how beautifully he’s accomplished his mission in such a short period of time.

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In just the last few weeks, we’ve seen men arrested at a Starbucks for simply “sitting while Black”, a Hispanic man threatened at gunpoint over a pack of Mentos that he’d actually purchased, several people of color murdered at one Waffle House and another arrested with wanton, unnecessary and life-threatening violence.

We’ve seen Black women, at a golf club in which they’re members, have the police called on them, others wrongly accused of stealing clothes from Nordstrom Rack and a female Black graduate student at Yale questioned by campus cops for the crime of napping while Blackin a dormitory common room.

And of course, the latest insanity of a group having the police called on them for the utter audacity of simply barbecuing  on a beautiful day in an Oakland public park.

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