“This is where they fought the battle of Gettysburg. Fifty thousand men died right here on this field, fighting the same fight that we are still fighting among ourselves today…You listen, and you take a lesson from the dead. If we don't come together right now on this hallowed ground, we too will be destroyed, just like they were.” Coach Boone, Remember The Titans

Once again, we are hanging at the edge of a war that still holds precedence; still holds jurisdiction, despite the decades that have past it. Even when we have won, the war still echoes throughout generations and hides in the prejudice that still stains through the covers we try to throw over it. Racism still thrives long after those four words,”I Have A Dream” were spoken by a King, long after the marches were walked, long after the war was declared over, but...

We are still stuck in mid-fight, the battlefields have just moved to a different place, to a different time.

They are on Twitter, Facebook or Snapchat.

The fight rages on everywhere.

Except that now, our war of racism; of equality has given birth to a new kind of prejudice. It has stretched beyond the original intent. We started out fighting a century-year-old war, but now we have horribly added a new enemy to the list: the ones who are supposed to protect us.

We have started another battle in a war that no one can win. If we choose to go on as we are now, victory will never be won. Both sides have suffered losses, have lost enough causalities, yet the fight still rages on.

We can no longer hide behind the facades of equality when acts of violence are still committed over the same ideals that started the wars we have lost more than won. We are united under one flag, under one country, under one constitution, one law system, so why not act like it? Will we really be divided into a nation of two once again for the fight still taught in our history textbooks, one we supposedly won?

If we had, then why are we still fighting?

Why did we throw our hands up in Ferguson?

Why do we still have to march through the open streets of cities to stand for a fight that should have ended long ago?

When will we stop doing this to each other?

When will we stop letting the past haunt us?

And will these questions ever be answered?

With the media coverage on the Dallas Police Shooting, Ferguson, and Alton Sterling, it seems to me that history still bleeds. The war continues to live on in closed minds, and sadly some still see in just black and white. The color spectrum of our minds have narrowed and grown since the days of Jim Crow, and we have come far, yes, but not far enough.

Yes, we have come a long way since the chains have been unlocked from human hands and feet, but it took us a while to see the new ones that took their place. We are protesting about an issue that has lasted for centuries. History tends to repeat itself, and even twenty-one centuries later, we are still bound to the same senseless cycle of racism, privilege, violence, and hate.

The kind of prejudice that still lives and breathes in society today has been taught and learned through generations. It's not supposed to be easy to undo what over a thousand years of blood, war, and intolerance has done, but it shouldn’t be impossible.

What people fail to comprehend is that color does not define a person’s character.

Whether a person is white, black, pale, or dark, holds no significance to who they truly are. Where one comes from has no indication to who or what they could become. We are not just a product of the neighborhoods we grew up in, we are not just the color of our skin, we are not just our majority, minority, or ethnicity, because we shape who we are, our choices define us, not where we come from.

We are not just the suburbs areas with white picket fences or rich neighborhoods with mansions. We are not just the small towns painted in graffiti, stamped with the label of ghettos or projects, that are made up of nothing, but street names and a few run-down buildings. Some are victims of circumstance, victims of where they grew up, but then again, why do they have to be victims at all?

What’s wrong with growing up in a neighborhood, where you were taught to be strong before you could walk? What's wrong with growing up in a comfortable home in a good neighborhood? Why does anyone have to be ashamed for living the life that was handed to them? Why do we have to look down at anyone who isn’t like us? If we were all the same, individuality would be a myth.

However, blood has been spilled from both sides for too long, and isn’t it time to end it? How can there ever be peace, if we still look at each other and see what makes us different instead of the same? We can achieve the same dream Martin Luther King Jr. saw for the future, we are close, so close, and if we work harder we can modify it into reality.

Literature and film have even touched the same subject again and again, yet we ignore the message they have tried to send. Themes of equality, tolerance, and compassion seem to just fly over our heads as we still see how "man can be a wolf to man", as John Green once said when discussing one of Toni Morrison's most proclaimed novels, Beloved. Her story, along with many others, forces us to see ourselves through a looking glass of words. They show us the beasts we once were and still, are sometimes. However, sometimes we look away from the reflection; from our ugly past, and become it anyway. We forget that we shouldn't treat each other lesser than the other, like animals.

It's as Morrison wrote,

"We have two feet, not four."

We've seen and read about the monstrosity we are capable of, the dehumanization we were masters at. Even when Lincoln declared all slaves free, we still tried to snap the chains back on and drew a cruel line that divided everyone and satisfied no one.

Now, we see the echoes of that cruelty today, and this time used against more than one race.

Someone lost a father.

Someone lost a son.

Someone lost a brother.

Someone lost a husband.

Someone lost a friend.

Tell me, who has won?

I see no victories in all those losses, just a war from a history book that still lives on.

We overlook the importance of history. The past holds more than just old bones and stories, but morals and lessons that we have yet to learn. I fear that we will be a people, a nation, forever stuck in the classroom of life, unable to graduate from our selfishness and on to munificence.

What will become of us if we are stuck in what we use to be? Why can’t we move on from such one-minded thinking? When will the hatred from the past stop holding power over us and more importantly,

When will we stop giving into it?

We are walking backward in time instead of forward, trying to relive the same moments that destroyed us. We have come a long way, we are decades away from segregation, yet we are still close to racism. We can erase it from our tracks if we stop thinking with the same indignant and bigoted ideals of the older generation. We don't have to be frozen in mid-fight anymore if we can let years of prejudice go. The future holds so much more promise than the past does. It is a world we can look forward to and design to be better than the one we are living in now.

It can be a world where blacks or whites don't have to look over their shoulder.

It can be a world where Hispanic or African American mothers and fathers don't have to give their children the same sad speech, to be wary and careful whenever they walk out the door because a stereotype will always follow in their wake.

It can be a world where we see the ones with a badge on their chest, swear to protect us all under oath, keep their word, and are promised the same vow in return.

It can be a world where we don't look for nationality in a stranger's face, but try to see a person for who they are.

It can be a world where every boy and girl is treated the same.

It can be the world a King once dreamed of in a jail cell.

It can be a world where we all walk on two feet, instead of four.

It can be a world where the past is no longer its master.

The future can be a time of betterment for society and it's children, where we finally ended those old wars and stopped fighting among ourselves. Tomorrow doesn't have to be another news report about a tragic shooting, or a step back towards a brutal past. We've had enough of reliving all those dark days, we need brighter ones. It's as Toni Morrison once wrote,

"We've got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.”

We need more than that.

We need a better tomorrow.