Last week, America’s social media stage was taken by storm as people reacted to the deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castille, and the four Dallas officers killed in the line of duty. Many people were expressing their grief and outrage in response to these events as all six murders, for that is what they were, were unjustifiable and heart wrenching from any camera angle. Many more, however, chose to stay silent, my facebook feed stayed surprisingly empty from this news with only posts from some of my future classmates to break up the never-ending reel of baking videos and Tumblr memes to express our outrage on the only platform we have. We are just a group of seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen-year-old girls who have no connection to either Baton Rouge, Louisiana or Saint Paul, Minnesota; other than the grief we feel for the Sterling and Castille families.
We did not know either of the two men who were killed for their skin color, nor the officers who had fallen in Dallas, but we still mourn for them and cry for justice all the same.
This is a dark, twisted road America has been down all before. The names of the victims are still seared into our minds; Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Walter Scott and there are so many more that have died by either a police officer’s hand, or a controversial law, or in police custody. The world knows their names thanks to the Black Lives Matter campaign and given recent events I am proud to say that even though I’m one of the palest girls you will ever meet, I stand with them as this police brutality has gone on for too long. All these lives were lost because they were racially profiled by those in badges who feel that a gun and a badge will protect them from the law they are supposed to enforce. However, some people are refusing to admit that this is a problem in the United States of America.
I can not even fathom how anyone can watch the videos of Alton Sterling or Philando Castille being murdered and then go onto say that it was their fault. It boggles my mind that people are claiming, “He shouldn’t have had a gun on him” or “He should’ve done what the officers told him too,” because frankly, these excuses are not enough to warrant the deaths of anyone. Alton Sterling was restrained by two police officers when he was shot in the back and chest by those who had slammed him against a car, pinned him to the ground, and kneeled on his arms to keep him from moving.
It was murder.
Neither can they say that Philando Castille wasn’t complying with officers. He had told the officer that he had a concealed weapon on him and he had a license for it. He told the officer he was reaching for his ID and he was shot four times by the officer. To make matters worse, his daughter was in the back seat. His four-year-old daughter saw her father shot and killed right in front of her because the officer was scared of Castille.
It was murder.
There is no other way to describe these cases. Both of them were murdered in cold blood and if their skin color had been lighter, they wouldn’t have died. It’s just that simple, and it disgusts me that this is what happens in America time and time again. What makes it even worse, however, is the fact that some people try to downplay this by stating that the All Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter campaigns are more important than Black Lives Matter. Let me make this clear once and for all, although both are valiant campaigns with messages that are meant to unite us, they can not claim to be more of an issue than Black Lives Matter if they only come on the coattails of another African American being killed by police. When they only exist during tragic events like this and are used to undermine a more serious, underlying problem that existed for years (Which is only finally starting on the path of being corrected as more and more people say that enough is enough) then they aren’t campaigns at all, but rather tools of racism wielded by people who would rather ignore this problem than fix it.
How can any human be comfortable with this? How can they not have bile rising in the back of their throat after watching Philando Castille take his last breath as his shirt turns red from his blood? Or feel tears welling in their eyes as they hear the shots that end the life of Alton Sterling? How can they not feel outrage and betrayal by those who are sworn to protect all civilians, but instead blame those who were killed? How can they blame those who can no longer defend themselves because their sides of the story were silenced, save for a few cell phone videos?
This is why I stand with Black Lives Matter, because I stand with the victims and they, just like everyone else who died for their skin color, deserve justice. They are dead and the blame will not fall on their shoulders, because it was not, and will never be, their fault.
