Still in the struggle #BLM
Two more black men have been killed at the hands of police:
Daniel Prude and Trayford Pellerin
Sad state we find ourselves in for sure. The protests have lost their fervor. The energy has waned, so has the news coverage, and now, the looters have hijacked the narrative. Instead of the protests raising awareness about the injustices of black people, they’re just becoming fuel for racists who focus on the negative aspects of the protests…the violence etc, instead of the reason they’re necessary, and use it for justification as to why people of color don’t deserve fair treatment.
We still need all hands on deck. If your gift is activism, we need your voice…on social, in the community. We still need people talking about the issue, saying the names of the victims so it doesn’t get swept under the rug. Most people are trying to stay alive every day, no time for much else, including some random black people getting killed when they interact with the cops. Easy for it to fall off people’s radar.
My opinion, we will always have racists. It’s a condition of the human psyche that seeks to understand the world through categorizing. Our mind automatically places things into groups and it’s quite common for the ego to offer judgments about those groups…good bad, right wrong, better worse. It’s the ego’s attempt to establish a level of identity and if we aren’t careful it will claim itself superior. The ego separates then declares anything unlike itself as a rival. Race is the easy card to choose but we do it with sports and so many other things…Bengals/Browns, Celtics/Lakers. My heart is still broken over the fact the East Coast/West Coast feud of the 90’s cost us two of the greatest rappers in history...Biggie and Tupac. In my college days, even fraternities and sororities had a quiet, hushed… mine is better than yours.
Racism will probably always exist in some form but we have the power to remind people that it’s a flawed logic; a low-level way of existing, a very base level of showing up in the world. Hate in any form is wretched. We are more victims of hate than perpetrators of it. It costs more than it gives and generally speaking you’ll find those with closed minds and hearts to diversity of any kind don’t fare well in life. They may exist, but they’ll never get to the level of thriving. Either their life will be small or if it does expand, they will be plagued by difficulty. The president is an example of that.
And lastly, I’ll say, at the risk of angry comments…come out of the streets. We need to find a way to modernize the protests. The spur of the moment collective outcry was very effective but the effects will never be long-lasting. Time and distance will fade it from people’s consciousness. Other routes are necessary if we really want to see change. We need to wield economic power…through spending blackouts, boycott businesses that don’t support equality. People of color need to become lawyers and policymakers. We need to encourage entrepreneurship, education, and wealth building. These will provide longer lasting effects.
And we need to pursue excellence. Controversial point I know, and I’ve thought about it from every angle, and no, it isn’t fair that we have to be better. But as I thought about it I came away with this…the benefit of pursuing excellence is two-fold…not only do I demonstrate to the world what you thought about me isn’t true, but I reap the benefit of my own success and the power of reaching my full potential. And we should be doing that anyway. Raise your children to be the best they can be…strong men and women of character who are intent on mining their gifts to uncover all they can become. Teach them to be masters of their own fate and destiny.
And when they encounter a cop tell them to hold their anger. Cooperate, obey all commands and politely, in a gentle voice ask any passerby they see to take out their phone and press record. And get the officer's name and badge number whenever possible. When the bad cops finally get the message they can’t get away with it, they’ll stop.
Prayers to all families who have been victimized by the perpetrators of these atrocities.
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