Search for Equality

The road toward equality for black people in America has extended between the end of slavery and the beginning of Juneteenth, all the way up to where black people in America stand today. The road toward equality has been long, winding, and loaded with potholes. More than once my thoughts have toyed with the idea of what if---it was possible to reach back in time and bring someone from the days of slavery in America, back here to present-day America? While I imagine they would be amazed to see the tons of technical advancements (like indoor plumbing) and hopefully pleased to see how far some of us African American people have advanced on the economic scale. I suspect that my visitor from the past would also be just as amazed to see that in many places African American people are still as un-accepted by some whites today as they were in 1865.

They would learn that while many of the abolitionists who wanted to see black people in America freed from slavery, still did not necessarily want to see those same freed African Americans as their neighbors, and would eventually join with southern lawmakers returning to Washington after the Civil War, and the status quo, to craft new laws that were said to be separate but equal, for African Americans. 

Slavery lasted so long because it was accepted and justified by the status quo. Slavery was eventually ended when enough people willing to go against the status quo, did so. Today the mistreatment of black people by the police is more-or-less accepted by the status quo, how do I know? Because every time a black person is killed by a community protector some change is talked about and then instituted, but the problem in this regard is that the more things change the more things stay the same, especially where black lives are concerned. 

Until enough people say enough-is-enough and rise up to put an end to the mistreatment of their fellow citizens, which for the most part seems to be what is happening today. All over the world in Africa, England, the Pacific Island even here where I live people marched across the Golden Gate Bridge this week to say enough-is-enough.

The continued demonstrations inspired by the death of George Floyd and so many other black Americans still continue and are suppose to generate another march on Washington DC the unrest will most probably be still happening on June 19, 2020, perhaps some meaningful change in the way police handle matters concerning black lives will happen this time.

May this current slave uprising, created by George Floyd's murder, not be put down so easily, so that there might finally be equal protection under the law for black people when it comes to those who police our community, and so that the words our community police display so boldly on their police vehicles: "To Protect and Serve" finally apply to black lives.