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Right now in our country people are frustrated at the mistreatment of African American people.  There is a longstanding history of African Americans being treated unfairly in all many ways.  Innocent African Americans have died at the hands of law enforcement, who are sworn to protect and serve.  Their murderers have not been held accountable and no justice was served.

• Emmet Till-Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family’s grocery store. 

• Trayvon Martin-Trayvon Benjamin Martin was a 17-year-old African-American teenager from Miami Gardens, Florida, who was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida by George Zimmerman. Martin had gone with his father on a visit to his father’s fiancée at her townhouse at The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford.

• Freddie Gray-On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray, Jr., a 25-year-old black man, was arrested by the Baltimore Police Department and subsequently charged for possessing a knife. While being transported in a police van, Gray fell into a coma and was taken to the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center.
• Sandra Bland-Sandra Bland was a 28-year-old African American woman who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas, on July 13, 2015, three days after being arrested during a pretextual traffic stop. Her death was ruled a suicide.
• On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African American emergency medical technician, was shot eight times to death by Louisville Metro Police Department officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove who entered her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, while serving a “no-knock warrant”. 
• On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Marquez Arbery, an unarmed 25-year-old African-American man, was fatally shot near Brunswick in Glynn County, Georgia, while jogging on Holmes Road just before entering its intersection with Satilla Drive in the Satilla Shores neighborhood.  

And most recently George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin and 3 other officers.  It was a routine police call for a run-of-the-mill crime — someone passing a bogus $20 bill at a deli.  But the ensuing death of unarmed black man George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis cops, and the resulting riots, have once again forced a divided nation into a bitter self-reckoning.

Derek Chauvin, the officer seen on video with a knee on Floyd’s neck Monday as Floyd begged for air, was also one of six officers who fatally shot 42-year-old Wayne Reyes in 2006.  Derek Chauvin had been with the Minneapolis police since 2001. During his career, he was the subject of over a dozen police conduct complaints.

We, African Americans, have yet to be treated in this country like the fellow human beings that God created.  

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

If its self evident then why do African Americans have to fight for it?

The riots that we are seeing across this country are examples of acting out.  People are in so much pain that they are demonstrating in a pandemic!  White, Black, Latino, Indian, Hispanic, and others have all joined in the fight for fairness, justice, and freedom.  When people go as far as to riot it is a reaction to inaction.  People are tired.  This is not just a black issue, it is a human issue.  Reform stops riots. The Millennials who are protesting are letting us know that they don’t like the way of the past.  They are largely not in agreement with what they have inherited.  And they want it to stop!  They are not trying to inherit a racist sick America from us.

Racism has no winners.  Racism and the hatred that racism brings, will ultimately hurt everyone.  Silence IS violence!  A house divided cannot stand.  In the end we will either get over this or it will take all of us out.  Racism is a lose/lose situation.