Black Lives Matter
Today’s the day my older brother will go back to college in Boston. It’s with a heavy heart I’ll say goodbye- a goodbye that I know won’t be forever. Because he’ll come back in a few months, just in time for the holidays. Of course, I expect my brother to return for the winter. How can he not come home? It’s a given. It’s a right. He’ll always be coming back home.
But that’s not the case for thousands across our country. Do they not have the financial opportunities and freedom to come home? Do they not want to return to see their families again? It’s the tragic reality of our nation that some people don’t know what their lives will hold in the next few months, weeks, or even days. People don’t know when they’ll die. People aren’t given a warning before they’re shot.
The reality is that the safety of the black population in the United States is jeopardized every day. It’s not right that they’re scared to walk down their street to a neighbor’s at night. It’s not right that they can’t wear a hoodie, with a pack of Skittles in their pockets. It’s not right that they can’t make a lane change without signaling first. And it’s not right that they have to suffer and lose one another as the days go by.
People want to think that the great country of America is well beyond its checkered past of racism. They want to think that America is a land of liberty, justice, and equality. They want to look past the imperfections and want to be blinded from the truth.
But it has to start by acknowledging the issue at hand.
Open up CNN, Facebook- any news source- the struggle for racial justice is ubiquitous in our lives. There are articles, posts, pictures that all implore the same message. Black Lives Matter.
It’s not the that black lives don’t reign over all others in significance. All lives do matter. Every life, no matter what culture, ethnicity, language, matters. But the ones that need our help today, the ones that need special attention today, is black lives. Saying that black lives matter too doesn’t invalidate the importance of other lives. When you grow plants in your garden, you don’t water all of them the same amount of water regardless of their state of health. The one that is withering away, desperate for a drop of water in its parched soil is the one that needs your special care and attention. It needs more water than the other plant that is overflowing with water and nutrients. Don’t let your plant suffer by insisting that you give each and every one of them equal attention. Don’t let the black population of the United States suffers by insisting that all lives should be treated equally when only one is desperate for that one extra drop of water.
Unfortunately, I, along with the majority, will never fully understand the fear and misery that the black population endures every day. I’ll never fully understand what it feels like to see my life flash before my eyes when I get pulled over. I’ll never fully understand having to fear for my brother’s life every single day. But the least I can do is to support this movement and speak up- for the kids, for the neighbors, and for the people- that their lives matter too.
“The ultimate tragedy is not oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” -Martin Luther King Jr.