Independence Day reigned with the annual confusion of what sounds are fireworks and what sounds are gunshots. Not long after the celebration of echoing explosions in the air, the land of the free yet again came to prove that we will never live in anything other than exile with the death of Alton Sterling making headlines in cities all over America.
I am not a women of arguments, and most of my opinions I share only to say that that is how I feel, and I would never try to convince anybody to feel differently because we are a species that thinks so independently. We are hardly ever swayed by what others have to say. Normally I think that it is okay to believe what I believe, but there hasn’t been a morning that I have woken up peacefully in a long time. That disturbance that I feel when the sun rises may be because I take the world a little too personally. I am not asking anyone to agree with me, but I can’t sit here for another day thinking of how I have this outlet to spread the word on a matter that I feel deeply about and still say nothing.
When I hear the words, “black lives matter” there is something inside of me that cringes because I am the kind of person who doesn’t want to believe that we need a public outreach like that. I want to think that it is 2016 and that America has realized that color is something so minuscule that it should have a name anymore, it should never even cross your mind, let alone be contemplated. It should be erased from the history books so kids growing up don’t even know that it was ever a problem. I can’t even find the words to explain how much I think that the pigmentation of flesh is so unimportant. Although I want to think like this, I think it is sad yet fair to say that in my lifetime this will never happen.
When I hear the words, “police brutality,” I’m confused. In my head that is irony and corruption. I want to think that any men or women who are willing to risk their lives to protect citizens are a fair and just person. I want to believe that they are the most selfless people of our communities and obey the law because they are the law. When I hear, “all cops are assholes,” I cringe because it is such an overgeneralized statement that is always taken seriously, yet hardly ever true.
Here is the thing. I was raised to never know the word "hate." I have never heard my parents talk poorly upon law enforcement, or people of a different race, and that is why I never even knew that I could form an opinion on a matter such as this. I was raised with no defying moment or experience to outweigh the balance of truth and fairness. I am open to all aspects of what could be happening. If a person is abusing the law they should be punished, but here is the key word that should be very well known in the land of the free and the home of the brave: they should be punished fairly. That is a hard concept to grasp since we are a species of such independent thinking we can never fully understand the whole story, we will never empathize completely to only one side of the story, some people will take a stance and never have the courtesy to even try to think about it differently. There are so many factors of our complex brains that justice will never be served fairly. None of us will ever be able to agree, but all I ask is that when a situation is presented we should take it all possible feelings that humans may have into consideration. That is how black lives will begin to matter, that is how all lives will begin to matter, when you put yourself into the situation. When we begin to contemplate what is the actual price to take a human life.
By this point I’m sure we are all familiar with the story of Alton Sterling, the 37 year old black man who was killed by two white police men in Baton Rouge Louisiana late Tuesday night on the fifth of July. There was a 9-1-1 call from a homeless man that police dispatchers said a man, thought to be Alton Sterling based on the physical description, was waving a gun outside of the Triple S Food Mart. Friends of Alton Sterling say that the accusation seem out of character for him. Despite what is true and what is not, multiple videos have been released of the two police men physically attacking Alton, then proceeded to shoot him. The officers claimed that Sterling had threatened them with the gun, but not in any of the videos is his gun visible, it appears to be in his pocket the entire time. Not only was he shot just one time if the police had felt threatened, but there were 6 shots total.
The 6th bullet hole is where I form my opinion to say that this is the definition of hate. This is the definition of hate from these two police officers, not every man and women to ever try to protect their communities, but those two men in this situation could have contained the problem with peace and dignity. Justice was forgotten, fairness was ignored, and a life was lost. This is not the first time America has heard this story, but for the peace and prosperity that America promises I hope that it can be the last, and the only way to accomplish a feat like this to open our minds and look past whatever hate or prejudice that we may feel and understand what is really at stake, human lives that matter. We have seen too much discrimination in the past year to ever think that we have solved all of Americas past tensions. There shouldn't be a fight over what it is called. We should support anyone who knows that America needs to see a change. We need to be the change. We need to stop the over generalizations, the stereotypes, the hatred, and most importantly the injustice that is happening in America. We've seen fire fought with fire, and America is tired of being burned.
