I want to preface this piece by saying that I am white. The issues being discussed in this article are ones I’ve never had the misfortune of experiencing first-hand, and I know I never will. However the puzzle pieces that make up my life have pointed me away from the direction of what too many other white Americans grow up to be; unwilling to learn about and completely oblivious to minorities problems.
I never set out to learn about white privilege. Like so many other white middle class Americans, it was something that rarely crossed my mind. It wasn't as if I didn't care about racism, it was just that it had never touched my life. It never even breached around the outskirts of it. Where I'm from in Lakeland, FL, my high school seemed like a high functioning and perfectly equal melting pot (I later found out that white kids made up nearly 50 percent of the population, but it never seemed that way, and it was never talked about).
And our president was black! Barrack Obama became the first black President years before I even reached high school, let alone began to learn about institutional racism. Even my class president was black! How could racism still be alive and well enough for it to be an issue? In my mind racism only existed in areas of the deep south, glittering in the senile minds of decaying old white supremacists, and once they bit it, racism in America would undoubtedly die with them.
It was then that I’d heard Trayvon Martin’s name in the news.
Unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin is shot to death by some crazy vigilante? I watched the trial and thought, “This man is going to fry. There is no way any justice system in my America will let this man get away with what he’s done.”
I watched in horror as George Zimmerman was acquitted.
And the haunted horror show continued. The news had put Trayvon Martin on trial for his own murder, parading up pictures of him they believed to look incriminating and questioning his motives. Maybe he had been up to no good? Why’d he have his hood up? Why was he out at night?
It was around this time I began to question the fabric of my white American life. Walking to the store to get some candy and a drink was something I’d done on numerous occasions, without any fear of being followed and murdered. But this is what happened to Trayvon. And if, by some strange occurrence had this tragedy happened to me, there was absolutely no way that the man would have walked free with out a murder charge. And yet, this was the nightmare Trayvon and his family were being forced to live in every day, all because he had been born black.
The trial ended in 2013 and since I’ve watched time and time again as the disasters continue to unfold. Unlawful killings of unarmed black people by police officers has happened so relentlessly in the United States that a google search on the subject prompts thousands of lists from websites like buzzfeed to organizations dedicated to tracking the murders like killedbypolice.net, where I’ve found the information presented below.
Dontre Hamilton was shot 14 times and killed by a police officer, though he was unarmed and committing no crime. Then enters into the media spotlight Eric Garner, a man choked to death in public by an NYPD officer who was using an illegal chokehold. John Crawford was killed by an officer for holding a toy BB gun. Unarmed Michael Brown was shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson. Dante Parker was stunned by a tazer until he died in police custody. Tanisha Anderson’s head was slammed on the pavement during her arrest, causing her unlawful death. 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by an officer in his front yard while holding a toy gun.
All of these deaths were in the year of 2014.
No police officer involved in these events was charged with any crime.
Things did not get better in 2015. In fact it was the deadliest year yet to be a young black man in America. A study by The Guardian found that out of 1,134 deaths at the hands of law enforcement, young black men were 9 times more likely to be killed by police officers than any other group of Americans.
According to mappingpoliceviolence.org the police have murdered at least 102 unarmed black people in 2015. This number is nearly twice a week. Not only that but 1 in 3 of these black citizens who were killed by police in 2015 were unarmed. Thirty-seven percent of unarmed people killed by police were black in 2015 despite black people being only 13 percent of the U.S. population. This means that unarmed black people were killed at 5x the rate of unarmed whites.
The amount of black deaths by police officers is staggering on it’s own account. What’s truly disgusting is the lack of justice, when only 10 of the 102 cases in 2015 have ended in the officers being charged with a crime.
As I write this today in 2016, the most recent deaths in the media spotlight of black men by police officers were those of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. The murders were both caught on camera, the disturbing footage showing the two men being shot and killed in acts of unnecessary and extreme violence. It is my fear that by the time this article’s published, a new story of an unarmed black citizen being unlawfully killed by the police will be making headlines.
The deaths are public and gruesome, the data is astonishing, and yet there are still people who aren’t behind the Black Lives Matter movement.
This problem of extreme police brutality to black Americans poses the question: Are we seen as our skin colors? Are we what we wear or how our hair is done? Are these the factors that contribute to whether we live or we die?
The justice system is intrinsically flawed when people sworn in to protect the lives of Americans are the same ones who are killing them over and over again. Black people are fully statistically justified in fearing for their lives when in proximity of a police officer, and it is not right.
This is why I stand up and say that black lives matter. Silence tells our law enforcement and the judicial review that backs it that these tragedies are okay. On the contrary, we must never be silent to towards hate and tragedy. We can’t keep allowing these murders to go unpunished while innocent black people are lying dead in the ground, unable to speak for themselves because their lives were taken unjustly.
Let’s not let one more black life turn into a hashtag. Let’s not be afraid to stand up to the people who are breaking the law and getting away with it. Let’s not hide behind our privileges, whatever they may be, and let’s instead take responsibility and stand up for what is right. We are the United States of America. We must unite the divide and fight against politicians, legislators and law enforcement that keep allowing black lives to be unjustly taken. It is then that we will be one step closer to being a country that truly understands what it means to be free.
