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I don't remember hearing about so much terrorism and natural disasters when I was younger. Of course, one could argue that these kind of things happen in cycles or maybe that I was just too young to pay attention to the news. Both could be very true. All the time, people try and say that our depravity is leading us to death and that we are constantly killing ourselves. None of this is really untrue. However, I wonder how awful we are while we create such wonderful things and are able to do so many things medically, economically and socially. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, we are actually advancing just as much as we are declining. We just do it in different areas.

The other night, a white boy entered a church in South Carolina with the intent to kill as many black people as possible. Now, before you tell me that he was mentally ill or he just got caught up in a bad crowd, I would like for you to explain the fact that he had so much ammunition to reload his weapon five times. Tell me how this was just one "violent outburst" and that he was normally such a nice, quiet guy.  Explain to me how he was arrested peacefully when, not a month ago, a fifteen year old girl in a swimsuit was thrown on the ground by a policeman three times her size when a parent called the authorities because there were "too many black kids" at a local pool party.

I told you before that we had come a long way in a lot of areas in our daily life. I would like to kindly remind you that racism is alive and it is killing our black youth. Racism calls a twelve year old little boy a "thug" while calling a twenty-something year old man "mentally ill." We grant white people a different route, something easier, while we give black youth absolutely nothing.  Do you see the problem? Have you noticed a problem when you turn on the news? Start paying attention. Do not be "color-blind," but see it. Notice that there are different races of people and that they are all beautiful. Acknowledge that, though we have advanced in a lot of ways, racism is still here.

catch you later,
Karleigh

“As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, he is trash.” // Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird