Last week, a white male shooter fired into a crowd of peaceful #BlackLivesMatter protesters. A video was released showing what everyone already knew about the shooting death of Laquan McDonald; an incident that occurred last year but resulted in the Magnificent Mile being shut down over the Thanksgiving holiday and a first degree murder charge for the police officer in question.
These continuous murders of Black males and females that are unarmed at the hands of the police grow each day and week. Many continue to forego jail time and some are even still working. It is easy to get angry by countering each murder with the innocent Black bystanders that are shot and killed in Chicago by other Blacks. No one ever provides the number of arrests usually attached to Black on Black crime. Nor the fact that we spend more on Blacks and Latinos in prison then we do when they are being educated in the public school system. In other words, Black shooters will see the inside of a jail.
I am beyond exhausted of no one making the larger than life connection of these senseless killings to living in a racially divided society. An America that has never ever admitted all of its wrongs against Black and Brown skinned individuals and communities. For every fair law, we have a counter one that allows Blacks to be incarcerated at a higher rate than Whites. And that the stress from living as a person of color in America is substantially higher than whites and greatly contributes to our quality of life and the chance for early death.
We scream and yell about how this country is based on Christian values and yet we ignore the most important ones: admission, forgiveness, and reconciliation. In order for America to stop chugging along at this pace, where the minority earns 90% of the income and the majority are simply striving to be in the top 1% by any means necessary, she must admit to all of the wrongs that have resulted in death, disfranchisement, poverty, hunger, homelessness, and overall disparity. Not an apology for slavery like Clinton gave in order to stop us from talking about Lewinsky or the bombing of an undisclosed location in Kenya. I am talking about truly admitting that American Slavery was systemic and is the foundation that American Capitalism is built.
Stop asking for Black people to stop talking about slavery! No one ever asks the Jews to stop talking about the Holocaust. And no one ever should, The fact that you still see, feel and hear the effects of slavery in all communities means that everyone is still suffering from not looking fully at the truth. Forcing the sanitation of a horrific time does nothing to heal society, It simply makes the anger percolate and marinate until it boils over into an angry riot. The original indigenous peoples of America make up the highest level of abject poverty in our country because WHO could ever recover from simply being erased from history. WHO could survive being murdered by disease and displacement?
Laws do not change hearts. Laws do not level the playing field. Laws can never replace the simple act of looking at ones wrongs in the mirror and being forced to reckon with each and every one. This current society is built on brokenness and death. It is built on the illusion of truth and the attempt to make change when the status quo is what those with money and power truly desire.
True reconciliation looks like everyone sitting at a round table. Laying all of the wrongs in the center. Providing a legal means to make up for past wrongs like the Holocaust Tax or the Nuremberg case. And then truly listening to each case from the past to the present, all in order to finally reach the point of reconciliation. Until this happens, I have little to no hope for a future that is simply a band aid on a seeping wound.
