Tonight my heart is heavy. Thanksgiving is just around the corner but it's difficult to be in the holiday spirit when the country is facing such a rough patch. Once again a black young man was killed and once again there will be no justice. The really sad aspect of this Michael Brown debacle is that I don't know anyone who was surprised by the jury's decision.
Prior to delving into this let me say a few things. 1. Thank you to all the police officers who do their jobs properly. 2. Not all white people are racists or ignorant to the struggles that people of color face. 3. Not all black people are thugs nor are they all innocent angels. They are simply people who desire to be treated with equality.
For those of you that don't know, my father is black and my mother is white. My mother raised me but she always wanted to expose me to my other half. While I do not look black and I consider myself mixed, being half black in America is the same as being full black. Now due to the color of my skin I have not had the same experiences that my younger sister (who has a darker complexion) has had with racism. Anyway, because of how I was raised I can see what's happening from both sides.
The general consensus from many white people is that Darren Wilson killed Brown out of self-defense. While I understand that cops are taught to defend themselves I wish they would use killing as a last resort. The more that comes out about the case the more that it sounds like Brown was not an innocent victim. I'm not even talking about his past run-ins with the law I'm talking about his last 10 seconds. Whether or not he was trying to harm Wilson did Brown deserve to be shot repeatedly? To me that is another sign of a police officer with some aggression. Does an unarmed person need to be dead for an officer to get control of a situation?
Black people are angry because they are seeing this situation for the bigger picture. Did you know that black people only make up 12% of the United States? Now combined that with the fact that black people comprise over 50% of the inmates in this country. After letting that sink in, imagine that your son or brother didn't have a weapon and was shot multiple times. All you want is justice or some type of acknowledgement of your grief. Instead the Supreme Court decided not to indict Wilson. The Grand Jury deciding not to indict almost NEVER happens. How would that make you feel if Brown was your family?
There's so much I want to say on this but I can't, I don't know where to start or end. The destruction that's happening in Ferguson is a shame but it's what happens when people don't know what else to do. There's so many different stories on what happened that night that I honestly have mixed feelings on the situation. But just from past incidents the concept of having a black son terrifies me and it shouldn't be that way. And even though the United States isn't as bad as it was 70 years ago there's still a race issue. That much is obvious from everything being said on social media. So this Thanksgiving I am going to say my thanks for the progress this country has made since it's conception but I'm going to pray for another leader like Martin Luther King. We are in times of change and we need leaders that can organize and unify us.
