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A Teenagers View on Racism
 
My sixteen-year-old son had to write a paper on racism in American and was encouraged to express his thoughts about it today. It did not take him long to recall several events that occurred within the last few years where an innocent African American male lost his life simply because of the color of his skin. Nor did it take him long to rehash his own experience of being racially profiled by the local police as he walked home from school at the age of fifteen.
 
In his paper, he cited several historical events that have taken place in this country that has impacted race relations in American. A couple of significant ones that stuck out to him which he referenced in his piece were the Jim Crow law and the case of Dred Scott vs Sanford trial. Ironically, which occurred in the state of Missouri now where my daughter lives. And while, those things drove some changes he reflected on how America today seems to have accomplished little in stamping out racism and he fears that history is well on its way to repeating itself.
 
I tried to find an argument against his last statement but found I could not defend my objections. In fact, the more we discussed his paper the more it became noticeably clear he was right.
 
And, over the course of the last few years, there have been more and more incidents where not only innocent African American men have been killed but African American women along with other minority races, based solely on the color of their skin. It does not matter whether they were killed by law enforcement (our police departments) or citizen claiming they were defending their rights to be armed.
My son has had to witness this kind of consistent injustices almost every year of his life. He has had the displeasure of witnessing voter suppression up close and in person as we live in a Southern state and he’s watched happening across this country. He has watched our minority neighborhoods across this country, being purchased for less than what the property is worth by big land development companies and then sold at values 3 to 4 times more than what they bought it for to people moving from other high-cost states to our state at an alarming rate. As city official and local government representatives push the sales in the name of city revitalization projects. Instead of them working with the people and the community to help them retain their property and develop programs to allow them to remodel and renovate, so they can keep the land their elders worked so hard to purchase.
 
And then when I saw my son’s words concerning our current administration and the impact the President has on his views and the youth of the future. I was floored by his statement, “….and just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, we the American people seem to be allowing the President of our country to time and time again disrespect countless people, races, and even their gender. He continues to use questionable language and actions meant to degrade, and belittle entire communities, which feels like he is encouraging racial conflict, but it is also damaging the idea of being American by corrupting our identity as a people. He cannot continue to condone issues such as dealings with the African American community, and police brutality. Or blaming the coronavirus pandemic on the Asian minorities.” Wow, I am proud of this statement and at the same time fearful of his future and what that looks like.
 
I want him to continue to ask the tough questions and speak out against the injustices of our society. Because as I type this another innocent unarmed black man lost his life on the pretenses that someone feared for their life or thought he was carrying a weapon or they simply felt like he was a criminal because he was jogging in his own neighborhood.
 
That, someone, was a man by the name of Ahmaud Arbery killed for jogging while black, by two white men who felt they had the right to make a citizen arrest for a robbery that occurred somewhere else in their city even though the person they hunted down and stopped wasn’t carrying stolen property and didn’t have anything to defend himself with. And instead of these white men contacting authorities about their suspicions they grab their shotguns, loaded them, and went on a hunt for a black man not a confirmed suspect but the first black man they encountered. They were not concerned with whether he was the right person, nor did they take into consideration they might be detaining the wrong person. They simply went looking for a black man to attack and if he resisted, they were going to shoot him and that is exactly what they did.