On the day what felt as a new era for change I was behind on my social media updates. I had decided to take a break from social media and get away from my phone because nothing seemed to be important at the time. That afternoon I came home to my parents watching the news about another African American man, George Floyd, killed by officers. The first thought to mind was, "Another man added to a long list of names because of a broken system." I then began to get the full story on a man that I had never met and would never meet. The time in every article I read broke my soul, 8 minutes and 46 seconds, for a man that did not deserve it. Never did I think that this man would cause a rise of angry out of many people.
With being in quarantine and not busy, it gave me a lot of time to reflect on the reality of our world. My family fighting through generations of equality, but seems we are repeating history. Grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all working towards a greater good for the next generation of people that look like me seems to continuously fail as time goes on. To then leave me wondering as an older sister of a young boy that the system stereotypes, will he have the same thoughts at my age or will our country have solved the issue? To leave me in worry if my brother, father, mother, or sister could be the next face I see on the news only to hear the story of a wrongful death.
As the social media blew up with sadness, angry, and all different emotions rushing through my body, the posts that hurt the most were the people that did not post at all. For people I thought I knew their morals and what they stood for seemed to be MIA when the African American community needed them the most. Then for others they were at the front lines when it all began, but once my feed returned to "normal" those same advocates would then later posts there great times of vacation while still to this very day people were being lynched. The deaths were just a trend for many social media users and now they have stopped educating. They have stopped trying to understand why a system such as ours would continuously go against the people of their own country because they do not face the hardships or stereotypes that come with their skin color. They no longer must think about it because for them, it does not directly affect them.
When the issue blew up it seemed to be a very bittersweet moment in my eyes. While great joy came over me to see a great mass of people throughout the country protesting for change, there was also the bitter part of why has it taken so many years of wrongful deaths and brutality for the issue now to be taken seriously at the headlines? For years of my adolescence my family and I felt the pain of many other deaths. Trying to explain the issue to many people in my community seemed to be a back-burner topic in their mind. Only to lead to my parents receiving nasty comments and emails for kneeling during the national anthem at my high school volleyball games because many people were ignorant to what kneeling symbolized. Those same people seemed to be at the front lines when the issue blew up.
I do not want the list of names to become any longer than what it already is. The change for equality is long overdue and the battle seems to be a never ending. I long for the day that I do not almost collapse when I see a cop car. I long for a day when my parents no longer worry that getting pulled over can result in my death. I long for a day that people will no longer have to have a talk about proper ways and motions of getting pulled over. I long for the day that my brother will not be viewed as a threat to our society, but only as another human. I long for the day that I will be beautiful and not seen as beautiful for a minority. I long for the day when all the people of this country will say enough is enough and will unite to fix a system that will protect us all.
I hope my generation will be the voice and change needed for this long enduring fight. It is no longer enough to "not be racists". You must be anti-racists. The silence from those with privilege is not golden, it is complicit. The fight will never be easy or get easier, but the first step to change is now.
