By Myra V. Strickland
Trinity Times Correspondent

Chi Osse grew up in relative privilege as the son of hip hop attorney and journalist Reginald Osse, with a private school education and a promising career in the entertainment industry, but the 2020 murder of George Floyd radically changed the course of his young life.

Nationwide protests erupted after a video was circulated showing Floyd – a 46-year-old Black man – face-down in the street with a Minneapolis police officer’s knee on his neck resulting in his death.

Osse – born of Black and Chinese ancestry who identifies as queer – became a Black Lives Matter organizer following the Floyd murder, co-founded the civil rights activist collective Warriors in the Garden and at 23 became the youngest council member ever elected to the New York City Council in 2022, running on a platform of combatting police brutality and systemic racism.

“As a council member his platform has been elevated,” said Aitza Haddad-Nunez, who teaches communications at Trinity Washington University. “He provides younger generations with a roadmap and path that they can follow to elevate their platform and voices. The work he does and how he got there today motivates them to follow a similar roadmap to get to these elevated places.”

Students at Trinity – who are predominately men and women of color – can see how the now 25-year-old Osse publicly transition from being politically indifferent, to social justice activist turned elected office holder to foster change, said Daryl Thorne, assistant professor of human relations at the university.

“He is using his power to combat the narrative of racism as a social construct, combating the ideology of white supremacy – which feeds into the narrative of inferiority vs. superiority complex – in regard to the facets of identity, including race,” Thorne told the Trinity Times during an April interview. “He wants to get Gen Z involved socially and politically.”

Osse’s father, Reginald, produced a podcast on socially political topics and Hip Hop, which clearly influenced his son’s ideology in Black queer feminism, Thorne said.

Osse is a high-profile example of a 20-something person of color who took an historical event and used it to be a voice of change himself, urging his generation to involve themselves in the social justice movement too.

“He is determined to help and consistent and leading by example and sticking to his word,” Trinity student Ashley DaCosta said. “We need wisdom from people who have the same mindset as us right now.”

Statistics on disproportionate traffic stops, arrests, convictions and jail terms among Black Americans have shown political leaders like Osse that combatting white supremacy and achieving racial justice will require active participation from young people across the U.S.

A 2020 New York University study examined dataset of nearly 100 million traffic stops across the United States and found that Black drivers were about 20% more likely to be stopped than white drivers relative to their share of the residential population.

The study also found that once stopped, Black drivers were searched about 1.5 to 2 times as often as white drivers, while they were less likely to be carrying drugs, guns, or other illegal contraband compared to their white peers.

That study also measured the disparity in stop rates before and after sunset and found that Black drivers made up a smaller share of those pulled over at night, when it is more difficult to distinguish the race of a driver, which suggests that racial bias may influence stop decisions.”Now that (Osse) is in office and has that political standpoint, he is navigating change,” DaCosta said. “I feel like now he is a face for the people. You usually don’t see people (in power) who look like you. He is for this generation.”