“All I did was be black.”

This is what she said as she tried to wrap her mind around the fact that someone called the police on her for eating lunch on her college campus.

But these aren’t just the words of Oumou Kanoute , the Smith College sophomore who an employee thought “seemed out of place.” “All we ever did was be black” is a phrase so common, there’s a shirt.

This is a battle cry of black people. Even our young.

Ask 8-year-old Jordan Rodgers . In June, she had the San Francisco police called on her for selling bottled water on the street while black.