Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
These two innocent, black males have been murdered by police officers in these past few days, along with two other black males—Delrawn Small and Jai Williams—in just this month. And just so far this year, police officers have killed 137 black people, according to The Guardian.
Alton Sterling was shot and killed by a police officer in Baton Rouge, Alabama, outside a convenience store, the Triple S Food Mart, after what The Guardian quotes as "some kind of altercation" on July 5th. He had been selling CD's and it was reported that he had been carrying a gun, even though, at the time of his death, he held no gun.
A day later, on July 6th, Philando Castile was killed by another police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, inside his girlfriend's car during a traffic stop. He was shot four times because he reached for his wallet to show his driver's license.
Waking up to these two breaking news a day after the other reminded me that the world we live in, no matter what, is still filled with hate.
These two innocent men, who just happen to be black, were murdered because of the color of their skin. They were murdered because racism is still very much prominent in our "modern" society.
The #BlackLivesMatter movement was created in 2012 after the death of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old boy who was murdered by a neighborhood watch coordinator, George Zimmerman, just because he was a black male wearing a hoodie.
#BlackLivesMatter has received a lot of backlash from just about everyone who doesn't want to acknowledge that blacks are always treated with such inequality that their murderers always happen to get away with their murder.
To respond to this movement, people came up with the concept of #AllLivesMatter which just goes to show the racism still prevalent.
Yes. All lives matter, but not all lives matter until blacks are treated with respect, not dehumanized and shown that their lives truly matter.
Saying 'all lives matter' is like telling a person dying from cancer that just because they have that disease, that they shouldn't make much of a fuss because there are a lot of other diseases.
When you put it like that, it's obvious how ridiculous the direct response to the Black Lives Matter movement is because the only thing it does is tell everyone to ignore the very issues that have caused riots and more deaths.
On July 7th, an armed sniper who has been identified as Micah Xavier Johnson, an Army veteran, shot 11 officers in Dallas, Texas, during a street protest against police brutality. Five of those 11 officers were shot dead.
Five men, like the two other men killed days before, will not be returning to their families once the sun sets.
The sniper, Micah X. Johnson, was then killed with a bomb robot during a standoff with the Dallas police, making him the fifth black male in this month to be killed by police officers.
I'm always told that you can't put out fire with fire and that will always be the case. In other words, you can't fight hate with more hate.
While Micah believed that killing officers would help to show the pain that the black community and supporters have gone through with the killings of their loved ones, he did anything but that.
In just a matter of days, our nation was covered with blood.
The police officers present in the peaceful demonstration had been protecting the protestors from anyone that wanted to do them harm, not the other way around.
Police brutality will not be solved with killing police officers... it'll only generate hate.
Black killings will not stop until people realize that their lives matter.
And that won't happen until we learn to stop hating each other all because of the color of our skin.
Once again, we cannot proclaim "all lives matter" until black lives truly matter and we cannot solve police brutality with killing police officers.
We cannot fix a nation filled with hate until we turn that hate into love; and until then, we have a long way ahead of us.
