The town held a meeting the following week to address the incident. Cassie's mom demanded it, furious that her daughter had been publicly humiliated for nothing. I sat in the back, feeling a knot tighten in my stomach as I listened to people discuss the situation as if Cassie wasn't even a person.
"They were just doing their job," one man said, referring to the police who had searched her.
"But why did they assume she was guilty in the first place?" another voice, angrier, argued.
I felt the pressure building inside me. I didn't want to speak - I didn't know if I could. But I stood up, my voice shaking. "Cassie didn't do anything wrong," I said, looking around at the crowd. "And no one here is talking about why this happened in the first place."
I wasn't eloquent. I wasn't sure of myself. But I knew I had to say something. I had to name the problem for what it was: racism. And in that moment, I realized I had been part of the silence, too.
YOU ARE READING
Breaking the Silence: A Journey of Unity
Non-FictionBreaking the Silence: A Journey of Unity is a poignant and emotionally charged story of two teenage girls confronting the hidden racial divides in their seemingly perfect small town. Maya, a mixed-race girl, has always felt the quiet tension, but it...
