Look around you. It is time to finally smell the long-burnt coffee left on the brewing pot or machine that has now been taken over by many people in the kitchen. Your ‘logical’ explanations as to why keeping calm and erudite on issues of racial violence and escalation of public protests are vague and unwelcome for debate. Sometimes, casual logic is misplaced in situations of common oppression. And racism is an uncomfortable reality faced by countless civilians and citizens around the world who may share the same legal status as others, but aren’t afforded the privileges.
The global anger over George Floyd’s death was not just a TV screen moment of horror, but the actual experiences thousands of Black people face in the United States. Protesting against systemic racism is a well pledged right that should not be taken away to suit the political aspirations of governments. In fact, social movements are deeply revealing of the current demographic departures we have seen in this pandemic – racism being an everlasting one. They reflect the demands of the people in which the name of any democracy serves, and it is their right to show discontent over fatal violence that affects us all. But, it is not just one Black man’s death that has exploded on to this stage, but the increasing number of brutalities against numerous Black people in a consecutive manner that has silenced us emotionally.
And sometimes, global outcries of justice and protests turn out to be inconvenient for those who want to get back to ‘normalcy’; an atmosphere of disbelief and inequality. Let us not be those who wish to go back to a life when thinking the next person who cannot breathe on the side of the road, trapped under racism’s well-endowed knee, can be me. Turning away from racial violence and injustice is just as well being in denial or complacent about the sheer injustice it carries. And just dissuading protests to be looting or civil disobedience is an archaic notion, one that was implied by dictatorships to silence democracy. So please, do not disagree with demonstrations, challenge the systematic silencing of marginalized voices who have risen to contradict slaughter and violence.
Black Lives Matter cannot be a symbolic hashtag any longer, it needs to be a more etched voice in every national narrative there is in the world. It is arguably one of the biggest social movements in the world and a relevant plea, to abolish racism. It is a plea for justice, for racial equality and to reform degradation in any form for marginalized communities of colour. These protests are significant in showing the rapid moral and racial decline that our 21st century has shown gravity into. The police brutality exercised by some national states in the US have shown how biased the judicial system is towards people of colour. And we cannot ignore the seriousness of it all anymore. It is a point of great disappointment and anger that civilians have taken to the streets, rightfully combatting the militaristic presence of those forces that seek to justify police brutality.
We cannot preach for self determinism on American soil if this inducts hate crime on Black people. President Trump had taken to the stage to show light on to the ‘anarchist, menacing chaos’ that he claims is the nature of protests in America. Not to mention his leashed-up canines and locked up White House is evident of an invisible and indifferent leader of a tired and embittered nation. Activists, citizens and community leaders are being branded as ‘vandalists’ while the country remains astonishingly polarized on how peace should be maintained. There is no peace in racial violence so there should no expectation of peace to follow after it. And these clashes between protestors and police have just been headlined to show the historic divide between the system and who it is supposed to serve.
A claim of personal privilege is a decry of systematic oppression and maybe beneficiaries find it bolder to call out the state of affairs during protests instead of what led to it. Look around once again to find who is on which side of the tear gas canons. We have come far and wide not to notice how important social movements are in this day and age where political repression and state atrocities on numerous communities are on the rise. Any explanation that should disagree with the fallacy on racial blindness or the seeming rainbow narrative of multiracial societies is unaware of the intense impact racism has had on countless victims of it. So, don’t be alarmed by how inconvenient this might be; be upset about why this had to be.