SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES. 2015 Ferguson Protests.
So I woke up to the news this morning that yet another black man, Alton Sterling, was shot by the police within the United States.
Before you decide to disagree or discredit what I have to say because I myself am black. Take the time to listen to what I have to say from an unbiased point of view. Maybe, take the time to look beyond your own potential covert racism.
Try to look beyond the fact that the person who was shot was a black man, but a person, someone’s father, husband, friend. No one deserves to be killed by the police. The same people who are supposed to uphold the law and protect all citizens equally prove time and time again to be anything but impartial when handling such matters. And before you say that racism isn’t real, would I have to humanise the life of a black man in order for some of you to sympathise if it were not?
Incidents such as these, send out the message that the law enforcement are dangling the lives of black men, women and even children in their hands. If you have seen the video, you can see how easy it seemed for these men to take this man’s life away and why the thought of this would instil panic within the African American community. Would it have been so easy if it were a white woman. What gives us the right as ordinary human beings to decide who gets to live and who must die?
How many more statistics do people need to be shown to stop claiming that “if you didn’t resist, you wouldn’t be shot”, “black people are not the only people shot by the police, this isn’t a race thing.” Black people are often treated with less sympathy by institutions from as young as primary age. Moreover, when will you be able to listen to what black people have to say about their honest experiences of racial prejudice without scepticism. As if we were the ones pulling the trigger rather than the ones on the other side of it.
How many more times will we hashtag blacklivesmatter before we realise that they will continue to kill us anyway?
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