As most people by now have probably heard, a 37 year old black man named Alton Sterling was brutally murdered by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When this article was written, the cause of his death was not known. Sterling was seen with a gun outside of a convenience store, which was why police were called, and while he was being restrained, he was shot point blank. There could have easily been reasons why Sterling was being arrested, but there is absolutely no reason why any person should be shot point blank while a man is sitting on his chest. No human, who in this country is innocent until proven guilty, deserves to be die that brutally, and his family and community deserves justice for the crimes committed against Sterling.

This was completely unfair to Alton Sterling, his family, his friends, his neighbors, and his community. The fact that crimes like this happen this often to African Americans is absolutely insane and terrible. Minorities are too often bullied and abused in this country, and it is embarrassing as a nation. Violence and racism have become entirely too prevalent in our country, and we need to stop that or it will destroy our country... unless it has already.

It is also unfair to assume that all police officers are terrible human beings who are all violent and racist. Yes, some white, male police officers have shot and killed innocent black men. But that does not mean that all white, male police officers are evil? In fact, this does not mean that all police officers, regardless of their race, are evil. There is no group of people that is entirely evil. This includes police officers, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, etc. Police officers are people, and some people are good, some people are bad. Some police officers are corrupt, cruel, careless, and just plain stupid, but there are several police officers who are good. In fact, there are more good police officers than bad, just as there are more good people than bad people. It is unfair to assume that all police officers are secretly corrupt when they have spent years training and took an oath promising to protect the public. Too often, police officers run into violent circumstances where they do not know if they will be coming home from work that day, give them some credit for being brave enough to do that. However, police officers are humans too, and that means that there are some cops out there who are can act just as criminal as the ones they are catching.

While not all police officers are murderers, there are still enough people, especially African Americans, being killed by police officers for this to be a huge problem. As I was typing this article, I just heard the news that another African American man, Philando Castro, was killed by a white police office. And the worst part is that he was killed the day after Sterling. Although we do not know the full stories about both men yet, we know that two black men should not be killed by white police officers in two days, or at least, we should know this by now. This is obviously a problem that is becoming more and more prevalent in our country, and still we have not come up with a solution to that problem. You can apologize to the families and friends of the victims all you want. You can send the police officers to jail. But how can justice be served if we have not solved the problem? How was justice given to Michael Brown and many others like him when unarmed black men are still being killed by white police officers? According to the Dallas Morning News, on average an unarmed black man was fatally shot by the police every nine days in the first seven months of 2015. That number is nauseating.

So what can we do to solve the problem? Well we can point fingers cops and call them racist all we want, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. The truth is, racism is still terrible common in our country. While we have eliminated slavery and given everyone equal rights on paper, people of different races are still often treated badly because of their race. Racism is a part of our everyday lives, and until we start acknowledging that we have a problem with racism, we are not going to fix it. Unfortunately, it is not that easy to eliminate racism. People can be hateful, there is no way to deny it and no way to change it. But, an important thing to keep in mind is that children learn hatred, they are not born with it. If we can teach love to our children instead of hate, that is a huge step we can make towards ending discrimination of all sorts, including racial.

Alton Sterling's death, along with the death of countless others, was completely unnecessary. No one deserves to die in the way Sterling did. No one deserves to be shot point blank. Black mothers should not have to fear that their sons will be killed on the street by people who have sworn to protect those same streets from crime. But all police officers are not to blame. The actions of a few should not define an entire group of people. Instead of blaming police officers for a few individuals' unnecessary brutality, we should focus on fighting racism in our country in general. I know this is not an easy battle to solve by any means, and I unfortunately have no clue how to solve the problem, but if we at least acknowledged that there is a problem with racism in our country, we can be on the right track to fix it.