Since 1982, there have been 92 mass shootings. In 2017, 1129 people have been wrongfully murdered by police officers. These numbers have been steadily climbing since the 80s and do not seem to be slowing down. But what’s triggering these outbursts?
There’s an article recently published on Huffington Post that quotes Dr. Pricilla Dass suggesting that if you grow up in an environment where you’re consistently told that you are superior to another race, then you begin to believe those things. There has been substantial information detailing how white men sometimes carry a “superiority” complex and when their status is challenged, it’s usually followed with violence.
There’s been a wide variety of evidence exposing the crooked and injust climate of America. Many people would argue that its due to violence, the war on drugs, and the current target on the DACA movement. Many others, primarily in the African-American community, believe that we’re in the middle of a modern day “Jim Crow” era. For instance, there’s been a rise of evidence hinting that racist groups such as white supremacists are demanding that “blacks” go back to where they came from. At the beginning of the semester on San Diego Mesa College, students and faculty experienced that hatred when a group of white supremacists wrote on the outside walls near the Black Studies department a number of racist remarks.
There’s this sense of uncertainty that the African-American community feels every single day, regardless of their status or stature.
Four years ago, when Michael Brown was murdered in Ferguson, he was headlined as a “thug” and was even blamed for his own death. Brown and many other African-Americans have been blamed for their deaths, but their white counterparts are considered and labeled “troubled” or “mentally ill”, while also being carefully escorted away from the massacre they’ve just created.
It’s getting old. Hearing that America is making “progress”, but in what form? African-Americans are finally allowed to have real jobs/positions and make some sort of money? What about the ones who make 60 cents to every dollar of a white man? The ones who are wrongfully deprived of awards in Hollywood? Or the many black children who keep disappearing across the nation due to sex trafficking and organ harvesting?
There are many different sensitive areas that could be touched, but what’s important is bringing the information forward and ensuring that not only African-Americans are aware of what’s happening, but also white people, hispanics, muslims, asian’s and every other race on this planet that may be being treated unjustly in our current society.
Terrorism in America is self-inflicted far more often than it is imposed from foreign countries. It’s a curse that the “founding fathers” placed on this country merely 300 years ago that can be reversed. The cycle of racism, bigotry, narcissism, capitalism and superiority has to be broken. We cannot continue on this path coexisting with white supremacists thinking it’s okay to entice violent protests, killing innocent people, threatening to lynch African-Americans, marching with Hitler’s signature hand gesture and implying that what they’re doing is, pushing “Trump’s agenda”.
With everything that’s going on in our society right now, the answer isn’t to turn your cheek to the madness. We have to stand up and do what our elders have done and speak up. Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, John F. Kennedy, etc., all spoke out and physically demonstrated their frustrations, which led to a drastic change in society and ultimately progress.
With time’s changing, and with social media being such a vital link in discussing social and political issues,we have the power to take the changes to the next level. Many of the murders of these black teenagers have been filmed and documented and have sent a large majority of not only African-Americans into an outrage, but also every minority in the world who may be the next target. But, it’s time for “We The People” to do what’s necessary and say, “THIS IS ENOUGH”!