It is hard for me to understand what I am feeling at this moment in time. A couple of things that keep going through my mind are the ideas that our capitol has just been stormed and also for the first time in history the confederate flag made it into the capitol building. As a person of color you can do nothing but sit there and watch with amazement. The idea of this happening is not surprising at all, in fact it is very on brand with what has already been going on. I feel I am watching America reveal the colors it has been trying so desperately to hide and what’s even more astonishing is it’s been televised. Six months ago we saw what happened to non violent protesters who were fighting for equality. January 6th showed the hypocrisy and special interest that law enforcement has in its core verifying what people of color have been pointing out since Jim Crow. Lady Liberty isn’t colorblind.
Saying I told you so to any person who tries to deny this doesn’t help anything at all. What is important now for us as a country and as communities is to decide how we can stop this division happening right in front of us. This can be a rebirth of new beginnings or it can be the nail in the coffin that divides our country and buckles us in for a long ride of consequences and maybe even civil war. The integrity of our system is at stake. By no means is our country perfect at all, but the chaos of our country is held together by the tradition of peaceful transition of power and the idea that everyone has a voice which is their vote and those two things must be respected in order for our Democracy to work. This gives us the ability to have opposing views and the majority is able to move forward with what they think is best. If we refuse to hear opposing sides and begin to use strong arm tactics that goes against what the majority of people want we will soon become no different than any other dictatorship this country has fought against.
All of this to say that the color lines in America’s political, housing, education, and law enforcement systems need to be dismantled. America has boast to be the land of the free it is about time this country starts showing it. We saw what type of behavior was brought out of the American people when a reckless leader is in office. We became more divided with every ongoing minute and even though that was the case there was a very valuable lesson that came out of this. White supremacy is still alive and well in the United States of America. People like to claim it went away after the civil war, after Jim Crow, after the Civil Rights Movement. No, we never handled the issue we just chose to never speak about it again. The people of color in this country are still demanding equality from the government that tells them they are equals. A house divided can not stand and if we do not deal with the issue of race in our country I do not think America as we know it will be around for much longer.
