All lives matter is a humanist thought and something that really should be true. Despite the efforts of individuals and collectives to promote a better and more just way of life, our world, societies, and country are not about equal opportunity and freedom for all.

Is it human to be so inhumane?

This inhumanity is an infection that removes an individual's focus from empathy and narrows their perception of the world. I have lost friends to such apathy and closed-mindedness. Now I am careful of how I define "friend."

However careful I am, there exists a variety of exigencies that impact black lives in America. Right now, what hurts my heart is how 2018 is as strange a time as any other for systematic injustice. March 18, Stephon Clark is shot at 20 times by two officers in his grandparents' backyard.

Clark was shot a total of eight times. In the mind of the officers, an unidentified object—Clark's cellphone—was perceived as a threatening object and is motive enough to take his life.

Then in Houston Texas, March 22, days after Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old American, and father of two, is gunned down at his family’s home—another black man is shot and killed in broad daylight. Amidst traffic, a distressed and mentally ill man is gunned down by police.

This victim of police brutality, Danny Ray Thomas, had a history of mental illness. Pair this knowledge with the fact that his two daughters were murdered in 2016 by their mother. This man needed help, attention, and healing. Instead, he is shot and murdered by an official of our American justice system. The same system that previously sent him to prison in a situation in which he may have benefited from drug rehabilitation.

Our system is flawed and in turn makes us flawed. Sheriff Todd Entrikin of Alabama makes $93,000 a year. He recently purchased a beach house worth $740,000. This was possible through the flawed system leaking into his meaty, inhumane, and apathetic being.

Exploiting an outdated law allowing him to acquire “excess” funds that should be spent on meals for prison inmates. However, he takes the money for himself and his needs.

He claims, “If it’s wrong, somebody needs to change the law,” justifying that since the rules are poorly written he will exploit them for his own gain.

You would think an enforcer of the law would have the decency to question such a shortcoming of his local legislature. So much for his community, those in need, or anything other than selfish intent.

Explore this issue. Entrikin is just one reported instance of a string of others, which are only a stitch in the ensemble of the privileged maintaining their social comforts while they repress others.

A broken system has broken our American people and, in turn, they break others. How does one repair such incessant breakage?

Currently, my understanding is through investigation and constantly working to understand the motivations, whether deliberate or inherent, that promote such prejudice and indifference toward those we share this time and space with.

The Eulogizer of Stephon Clark’s memorial service, Zaid Shakir, defines what he coins a “uniquely American problem” in which upwards of 1,000 citizens are shot by police. Police violence has always largely been centered on color, but it seems that we are long overdue to focus on the system and change how it exploits its citizens.

As Shakir puts it, we need to put all superficial difference aside, overcome such ideas and remember that, “We are a human family.”