Taylor Bembery
Associate Editor
Due to high number of African-American deaths from police encounters, there has been one question many people are asking across the world: Do black lives matter? Since the grand jury decision in Ferguson, Mo. of no indictment for Darren Wilson, a white police officer that fatally shot unarmed black teen Michael Brown, there has been a worldwide movement for justice.
Now as a journalist, I have to look at this case from both spectrums and play the devil’s advocate. As a human, the situations we put ourselves in usually end positively or negatively depending on our conflict resolution. How do we know that Brown wasn’t a neighborhood terror or did not follow the police officers instructions? Why was only this young man gunned down and not his friend Dorian Johnson, whom Brown was with at the time. Was there something Brown did differently?
Do not get me wrong, I am not siding with Darren Wilson in any way. His procedure was not the best because as we all know Brown was unarmed and did not deserve to die. As a young adult (of any race), I know we may act differently around our friends. To his family, Brown might have been a respectful high school graduate that was on his way to college and could do no wrong. To his friends, he might have been somebody cool to hang out and used his large stature as power. Let’s be real, it’s time to start looking at the bigger picture and start having accountability in our actions.
Even though we would like to think that the justice systems are fair, clearly they are not in favor of minorities (particularly African-Americans). So with that being said, it is all about your actions and what you stand for. Foolish actions will put you in the position of begging for a police officer’s attention. If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything (in this case anything meant death). We as African-Americans cannot wallow in ignorance. Education is the most powerful weapon of all and it will lead us to our salvation.
When is the last time you heard of an African-American male with a Ph.D. being gun downed by a police officer? Stop giving these police officers that do not care about your life a little bit of a reason to shoot you! This was once a war on civil rights for equality to vote, to equal education, and to even be able to use the same water fountain as whites, but now it has turned into a war to save black lives in 2014.
I feel this war is raging because we have forgotten what our ancestors stood and fought for and this has resulted in poor choices being made. Poor choices like black on black crime, not registering to vote, not voting at all, dropping out of school, etc.
During the Civil Rights Movement, the black male was feared and eliminated, but not for foolish acts. Leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, James Meredith, Medgar Evers, and Hank Thomas were eliminated because of their intelligence and what they stood for. Presently, some blacks are eliminating each other because they do not stand for anything.
Some young people would rather stand in line for Jordan’s every other Saturday than to stand in line to vote for justice. Then they say things such as: How is protesting going to change what’s going on?
Well, I’m pretty sure during the Civil Rights Movement, when FOUR black men sat in at ONE diner in Greensboro, N.C, or when ONE lady refused her seat to a white man on ONE bus in Montgomery, Ala., or when NINE students integrated ONE white school in Little Rock, Ark., or when ONE man had ONE dream in Washington, D.C., they weren’t thinking about the impact they would have made, they just did these things because they knew it was right.
African-Americans have affected change in small numbers in the past just by standing for something. Don’t think that it can’t be done again but it all starts with self. We all need to ask ourselves: What do I stand for?
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