I’ll cut right to the chase. I was beyond shocked to find out what happened Tuesday afternoon in my hometown, Chicago.

As almost everyone begins to wind down from the election, some people find other ways to continue their message of hate for the new President-elect through racism. This deplorable act brought a new viewpoint to what I thought of my city.

If you don’t already know what happened, the unidentified teen victim, who was known to have special needs, was kidnapped by Hill, one on the perpetrators, and taken for multiple days. Just this past Tuesday, the unidentified victim was tied up and gagged in a West Chicago home. The incident was reported when a Facebook Live video appeared, with 4 of the suspects began beating, harassing, spitting on, kicking, stabbing, slashing the victim, and even verbal abuse about the man’s mental state. The set of events was reported to go on for multiple hours, but the video posted online only contains 30 minutes of the attacks. Facebook said it pulled the original video from a suspect's Facebook profile in this statement:

"We do not allow people to celebrate or glorify crimes on Facebook and have removed the original video for this reason. In many instances, though, when people share this type of content, they are doing so to condemn violence or raise awareness about it. In that case, the video would be allowed."

I hear about the hundreds of deaths and murders that occur in the Greater Chicagoland each year. But, this was a real eye-opener for the city. This was no death or murder. This was a racial attack carried out on a mentally ill teenager, who shouldn’t have been looked down on in the first place for sharing his political views.

This hate crime brings one thing to my mind: “What has happened to you, America?”

We are a nation where racism has become too big of an issue. We should not have the “Divided States of America,” but rather come together where there is no racial tension, and there are no interracial disturbances like this one. It should not take an attack like this one to promote a change in the way we treat or hinder racism. We need a change, and we need it now.

For those of you who are advocating for what happened, I would like to know why. Let me know and inform me on why you think it is acceptable, to not only publicly humiliate this teenager (who has done nothing wrong) but to also verbally and physically abuse him to the point where he is scarred with the actions of the suspects.

The four suspects, Hill, Cooper, Covington, T., and Covington, B., have all been charged with a hate crime, felony aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.