I was driving on a dark road April 4, 1968, when Bobby Kennedy came on the radio saying Martin Luther King, Jr., had been killed.
I’m sure you know that speech.
We’ve come a long way since then but have so far still to go.
“If you have 12 bad cops and 1,300 good ones who don’t turn the bad ones in, you have 1,312 bad cops.” — Unattributed
“What did you expect? I don’t know why we’re so surprised [by the riots]. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for three hundred years . . . ” — Lyndon Johnson
I’m An Angry Black Woman. This Is What I Want White People To Know. “If you’re thinking, ‘I’m not racist, I’m not prejudiced, I’m not biased.’ You are. On some spectrum. And here is how I know.”
. . . Racism exists because white colonists decided hundreds of years ago to dominate a land full of native people who were minding their own business and then to kidnap people from another continent to labor mercilessly without compensation for their economic gain. And every turn of events since, every snippet of progress thereafter, has been twisted to maintain the economic and social hierarchy that existed the day America became America. . . .
Better still, listen to Trevor Noah (successor to Jon Stewart as host of “The Daily Show”).
. . . How many George Floyds are there that don’t die? How many men are having knees put on their necks? How many Sandra Blands are out there being tossed around?” asked Noah. “It doesn’t make the news because it’s not grim enough. It doesn’t even get us anymore. It’s only the deaths, the gruesome deaths, that stick out.
But imagine to yourself if you grew up in a community where every day someone had their knee on your neck? If every day someone was out there oppressing you, every single day, you tell me what that does to you as a society, as a community, as a group of people and when you know it’s happening because of the color of your skin. . . .
“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.” — Bobby Kennedy
Like these Ferguson police taking a knee in honor of George Floyd and these Camden police marching in solidarity with the protesters.
