Every newspaper headline, social media outlet, and news cycle has broadcast the same story: the riots in Baltimore, the injustice that has once again fallen on the African American community—a black body that has fallen on account of the very forces that are supposed to protect us all, not just a select few. Freddie Grey, among hundreds of others this year alone, lay to rest because of police brutality, something that African Americans are all too familiar with. With the recent acquittal of officer Dante Servin, an off duty cop who killed Rekia Boyd in 2012, the same storyline is clear in the media: all lives clearly don’t matter.
Calls for peace and pleas for justice have fallen upon deaf ears with the continuous genocide of a people that can no longer muster up the notion of “turning the other cheek.” In Ferguson, MO, our backs were up against a wall; in Baltimore, MD, the same walls are being torn down. The same pleas and cries that Mike Brown’s parents solicited to their communities got them another officer that could walk down the street and hug his family one more time. Peaceful protest have erupted around the country—and even around the world—showing solidarity of a movement that proclaims that #BlackLivesMatter.
One could ask, if we’re living in a “post-racial” society, why would the movement be needed? Why would protests begging for justice in the case of numerous murders by men in uniforms be necessary? Why has no one heard these pleas and cries for justice and equality? What have peaceful protests and demonstrations gotten the families that suffer and the ones that will be plagued with the same fate in the near future? What can we do as a community to try to alleviate—or better yet, eliminate—this persistent problem that society conveniently overlooks? I could argue that the current state that Baltimore is in is the last resort from a community that has no other way to express its pain and anger against an institutional monster that only continues to grow. Trying to articulate in peaceful words that we are tired of seeing another black man or women’s name following a hashtag only gets us so far, which is not far at all.
Ferguson and Baltimore have been grazed with pain, confusion, anger, and unanswered questions. How many more black bodies have to fall before the whole country has to be set ablaze? Violence may not be the answer, but to garner the attention of a society that pays you no mind in peaceful demonstrations may be the very rude awakening needed to erupt change in an otherwise outdated and backwards society where the term “post-racial” is a façade that only those living under a rock could fathom.
Educate yourselves, have the conversations about what is happening in society with any and everyone you know. I will leave you with my favorite quote from Henry David Thoreau: “Not until we are lost, do we begin to understand ourselves.” Never be afraid to be a booming voice against injustices and a light in an otherwise dark world. Love yourselves and, more importantly, love one another!