We are halfway through the chaos that is called 2020. No one seems to remember placing any of these atrocities on their vision board. We are wearing masks and appearing disheveled in zoom meetings. Appointments are required everywhere and long lines of people gather in front of shopping stores. Free food pop ups are everywhere.
Curfews and fires have lit up the country. Again. People all over the world are outraged. Again. Except something is different this time. This was not just another black man being destroyed by the systematic oppression that most of us would never mention in polite company. This was one of several viral videos that have taken over our lives and we as a collective human race have simply had enough.
This war has been raging since we were stolen from Africa. Here it is the so called age of freedom in the greatest nation in the world, and black people can not receive the most basic of human rights…..life. We can not live without being hunted and killed in broad daylight for simply being black. It is truly a crime.
Racial discussion have always made me uncomfortable. I know that is there. The history is in front of our faces. There is no denying it. Now? I have bombarded social media including my business accounts. I fully expect associates to turn a blind eye or for people to unfollow me. My attitude is to let them go on their merrily little way because I have to talk about this. I have to read about this. I have to post about this. Nothing else is as important as this. Why? I can’t keep up with all of the names of black people being murdered in cold blood as the police sit back and cool their heels.
There is no respect for the gift of life. How can you look at the color of another human’s skin and simply decide that he or she does not deserve to live? Are we not all created in the likeness of a created power? Are we not all members of the same human race? Covid has taken many people to their demise; but the one virus that has yet to be surpassed is the horrid stench of racism is the United States of Amerikkka.
Here I am. A childless black woman watching all of this. Emotional does not begin to describe the mere notion that a grown man cried for his mother and people were forced to witness his horrific death. Did the sun shine on the police officer’s badge as he posed with his kill? He was proud. He rid the earth of another one. Maybe the worst part is that he had help to do it.
If you or I commit a heinous crime, the law is swift to correct our actions. This man walked around for five days before anything was done. Fired? A man is dead….The autopsy said that he had underlying causes. What? You mean that is what you were told to say so that the killer could be allowed to walk and yet another death of a black man by a police officer could go unchecked. One more name for the long list of the dead. Well, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Amish. Satanists. Black. White. English. African. Iranian. Old. Young. Middle. Gay. Straight. People all over the world are demanding change. Protests can probably be seen from outer space. Plans are being made and discussions are being held all day every day. The pain is increasing in the atmosphere, and the demands are louder.
I have taken to checking on black people. I post about black people. I speak to black people in the street. We are utterly disgusted at the same scene replaying itself over and over again. The blatant lack of concern for our lives is beyond excruciating. It is not safe out here. Is an entire police squad going to barge into my home and kill me as I sleep in my bed? This is our reality in 2020. White women feel free to call the police to kill us because that is exactly what happens.
Perhaps, my discomfort with the issue has also helped to enable it. The comfort factor has gone entirely too far. Well, let me welcome everyone to a new day. My name is Crystal A. Sawyer. I am a black woman that resides in the United States of America. My family is from the Caribbean. If you dig a little deeper, I am from Africa. My people did not come here by choice. They were stolen from their homeland and have suffered ever since.
In the land of the free, home of the brave, the black man suffers at the hands of his original oppressor. People wonder why hurricanes form off the coast of West Africa and demolish the same stops that existed during the slave trade. It is not a coincidence. We have paid a price for a greed.”