I’m going out on a limb here to express something – I don’t necessarily agree with everything being protested right now.
The polarized arguments of skin-color shaming and choosing sides between citizens and government, are minor deviations from the two(-ish) issues that we should be truly focused on:
- Systemic racism against African Americans
- Police brutality
I don’t agree that we, as a society, should be blaming any group of people, skin color, or political affiliation. That’s counter-productive to the work that needs to be done.
The work that needs to be done consists of:
- Acknowledging that systemic racism exists
- Acknowledging that police brutality exists
- Acknowledging that as a global society, we need to do an immensely better job at making African Americans successful
- Defining and building solutions to address the above three points
- Continuous improvement of those solutions (nothing is ever done…)
In the recent days, I’ve had conversations with family, friends, coworkers, and consumed too much social media. I’ve also seen people becoming bifurcated, separated into fractions over varying perspectives.
That’s wrong.
This is not a time to separate ourselves from people that think differently than we do. This is not a time to close doors, un-friend, or block people that have different views.
This is the time for us to embrace each other and truly understand how we’re more similar than different.
I want to mention a strong callout to my non-minority friends in this whole discussion – you shouldn’t feel bad, guilty, or ashamed because you’re a non-minority.
I won’t tell you what to feel, but instead of shame and guilt, I feel tremendous sadness that we’ve been so unkind, so deaf, and so mean to each other, for so, so long.
Let’s focus on the fact that we can be better allies to African Americans, let’s focus on the fact that we should not have militarized police.
We need to come together to learn, listen, and rebuild society, a society that we’re all proud to be part of. We need to come together to make each other successful, safe, and protected.
We need to learn how to be kind once more.