It has been 200 years since slavery was abolished in this country and we still have people of color in chains. It has been 70 years since segregation and discrimination was banned in the United States, and yet we still have racism prevail in the shape of hatred; the result of which includes killings and mass shootings. If slavery was abolished, why was it then necessary to outlaw discrimination? Why was it necessary for great speakers, thinkers, and leaders to step forth and denounce racism separately from slavery? The answer is simple: Slavery never ended in America. It was only given a new face, a new mask to hide behind. Only, instead of being enslaved to a master, people of color were enslaved to society.
From the likes of Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King Jr. to the #BlackLivesMatter Movement now, it has become imperative for this country to acknowledge the rights of all people of color. In every generation, we struggle in coexisting with our brothers and sisters of humankind. We struggle with finding the balance between learning from the past and implementing those lessons in our daily lives. We do not learn from history if we do not apply the same principles and morals into our lives.
When it comes to #BlackLivesMatter or to African American history, we turn a blind eye to the efforts that people did decades ago and start all over. By posting a slogan or picture on our social media pages, we think that it is sufficient and we move on. But, highlighting the #BlackLivesMatter movement on Facebook or Twitter does not mean that one cares, rather it is a poor excuse to be on the bandwagon of social justice in America. If we want social justice, it takes more than a post or tweet, but a collective effort of the community. Unfortunately, we have lost the true meaning of learning from the past, and are fine with being stuck in it rather than continuing the fight that people died for years ago.
The #BlackLivesMatter movement did not start when Abraham Lincoln announced the "Emancipation Proclamation," and it did not end when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. It never ended and it will never end. Human integrity is worth more than a post, it is Martin Luther's dream for social justice. It is the value of all those lives lost in three hundred years of American history. It is the continous struggle of black lives today, in a society where people hide behind false posts and promises, congragulating themselves to be better than those people of yesturday. We are dreaming when we think we are the people of tomorrow, because in America, tomorrow never came for people of color. Tomorrow continues to never come no matter how many rallies, protests and killings we have. Tomorrow is a promise that was never fulfilled, a dream still worth dreaming of and a pretense of an egotistical soceity too concerned with themselves to notice that we have never changed our ways. And 1965 continues on, because 2016 never came. Tomorrow never came.
We have not learned from history, but history learned from us. History learned to not trust those people who post empty promises on their walls and feeds if they are never going to take action for their values and beleifs. History did what it could for the #BlackLivesMatter movement, but now it is our turn to prove that we care, to change the way we view the past. The past is not just there for us to read about, but to implement its lessons and continue on the fight for a tomorrow.
