Today I learned of the video that is rampaging across America right now, the very video depicting George Floyd being murdered by a cop with 3 other officers standing around facilitating it. My heart cries out for him, him screaming for his mother and I can't breathe as he's slowly being suffocated. I'm crying as I'm writing this.
This is the sad truth of America right now, people of color are dehumanized. It seems like people can't remember the very fact that 400 years ago Africans were taken into slavery against their will to serve white people. It seems that people can't remember that white people came in at the colonization of America, what is painted as the beginning of something great and just, that they came in and murdered the people who were living there. It seems that people can't remember that the very beginnings of America we're built on murder and unrighteousness.
Instead, people of color are painted as violent, judged before they can even open their mouths. All people of color. American born Hispanics have been deported, families torn apart. Immigrants who have come here legally for a better life have been denied jobs. Illegal immigrants who are trying to leave the violence in their own country escaping only to be given no second chances in the supposed land of the free and sent back because they are "taking American jobs".
The truth in that matter is the fact that they take the jobs that people don't want. If a white man wanted to work at a construction company, become a garbage man, mow someone's lawn, listing some of the stereotypical jobs that immigrants may take, he could. If they had wanted that job, they probably would've gotten that job over the ones who did get the job. But no one cares about that. Just like they don't care about the very essence of life and the constitution that states, "all men are created equal."
All men are created equal
Yet the fact of the matter is that no one cares. Stereotypes and prejudices are created against just the color of someone's skin, not the color of their soul or the color of their voice. They are human, we are human, this is a fact. Yet people like Derek Chauvin exist. They exist and are real and they don't give a single shit about someone except the color of their skin.
He murdered a black man, George Floyd, on camera and the only repercussions he is facing right now is that he lost his job. He is not in jail, he has no charges against him, his police statement is even proved false at the sign of security footage shown. He is, a free man.
This isn't even the first time. In 2006 Derek Chauvin fatally shot a man named Wayne Reyes.
In 2008 Derek Chauvin shot an unarmed man named Ira Latrell Toles unprecedented.
This isn't his first time, but I pray that this is his last. And I pray that no one will have to go through this pain again.
He should be charged with at least second-degree murder, if not first. The other 3 officers should be charged with at least accessory to murder. Yet they probably will not.
This would be shocking if this wasn't the first time this happened yet George Floyd cried the same words that Eric Garner did in 2015, "I can't breathe." I hope these words haunt these officers forever, yet I can't bring myself to believe that a man such as Derek Chauvin could feel a humane thing like remorse.
The sad thing is if the situation was reversed if a black officer was kneeling on a white man's neck, then the officer would already be in jail. Yet they are not and all four officers remain free men.
I am young, this I know, and I am scared. Scared for my life, scared for my family's lives, scared for my own father's life where he lives away from me. And it's not because of the virus, which has already hospitalized my grandmother and took my uncle away from me and my family, it is because of racism. I know my father has been subject to police brutality in the past, where he was stopped while riding his bicycle and almost beat to death by officers.
I am scared to wake up and see him in one of these videos even as he lives in a small town of only 60,000 in the county. I am so scared to have him taken away from me because America is prejudiced and wrong. Even the very thought of it has me in tears as I know he is subjected to racism in his workplace more often then I could imagine.
George Floyd could have been my father and I wouldn't know what to do with myself if he was. And George Floyd has a family who right now probably don't know what to do with themselves.
And they shouldn't be having to face this. And I'm young, and I can't do anything to change it.
And it hurts. It hurts so much. It needs to change. America needs to change.
