I am grateful that I don’t live in a time where there are separate restaurants for white and colored people. During my life, I haven’t experienced the separation of schools, of theaters or of water fountains. I am grateful that I don’t live in a time where blacks and whites are separated by neighborhoods. I learned about the civil rights movement of the '60s and '70s in school, learned about the riots and the killings, and the segregation. My small childlike mind could barely comprehend why society would be separated based off of skin color.
I consider myself lucky that the world has not stayed in this time of horrible racism. I thank God for many people who have changed the world, including Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, my grandfather as he fought against segregation in schools, Bernie Sanders among the many whites who protested for the civil rights of everyone, for President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama.
But then I turn on the news. I see Trayvon Martin’s face, killed because he was walking home from the store. I see Eric Garner’s face, murdered by policeman in prison, unarmed and harmless, suffocating as he begs for his life. I see the face of Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling; the list goes on and on. Over and over again the world has to mourn the souls who didn’t deserve to be sent out of this world.
During the civil rights movement, society was used to hearing about riots and killings of blacks. Society was trained to live inside the separation, and to live as racists without an ounce of doubt.
The saying goes that history repeats itself, and it looks as though we haven’t learned from our mistakes. Since the Alton Sterling shooting, there have been deaths of police officers, lynchings, and most likely so many more killings that the media does not report. These seemingly endless deaths of African Americans, resulting in violence against law enforcers, are a direct result of society’s deep-seeded racism developing once again. It seems that I am living in a time and place that I learned about from my textbook in grade school.
My message to everyone is to fight for the rights of everyone, regardless of race, class, or gender. This is not a political issue anymore. This is a matter of life and death, and racism is not political. It is unethical and immoral.
Today, I remember all of the African Americans who were murdered at the hands of law enforcers. I also mourn the deaths of law enforcers at the riots in Dallas, realizing that these killings still result from the imbedded racism brought about by white supremacists. Racism has existed in America since white supremacist Europeans instilled slavery into the mind and heart of the land we live on. We live in a different time, but we still feel the heartbeats of those slaves who were beaten, raped and kidnapped by their white owners. The spirits of those slaves cry as African American men and women beg for their lives today.
And as we angrily watch the videos and read the articles about hundreds of innocent African Americans, as the images of white supremacy hold them by their teeth, may we not make the murders political, but stand together and fight against racism yet again as we did before.
