Dear people of the world,
I write to you in all seriousness expressing my concerns over an issue that had plagued our world. Despite the gravity of the situation, we fail to acknowledge it. No its not climate change. No, it's not global warming. No, it is not feminism. No, this time is different and please do go more than just "wow" or "you opened my eyes" and switch to a different tab. You can do better.
Your shock isn't enough. Your wow isn't solidarity. Your repost isn't justice.
George Floyd is not an isolated incident. Neither was Breonna Taylor or Eric Garner or Freddy Gray or Sandra Bland or Philando Castille or Sean Reed or Michael Brown and countless others who have lost their lives to law enforcement.
Four industrial revolutions but not a single social revolution.
Is democracy a bit too much for us? Why do some of us assume that we are more privileged to do something because of the color of our skin or the god we believe in? Just because I am free, can I do everything and anything I wish? The problem is we never realize that something is wrong until and unless something wrong happens.
And there's more to blame than just the people. It's the government too. There's institutional racism( or more commonly known as structural racism). New York's school attendance boundaries encourages racial segregation and so does the house ownership maps of several states in the US. Occupational discrimination had snatched thousands of jobs from well qualified African American and Latinos.
When people of color propel themselves along the path for achieving the American Dream- the belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone- even in the face of such systemic barriers, the economic return is than that for white people. For instance, white adults who don’t graduate from high school, have children before marriage, and don’t work full time still enjoy much greater median wealth than comparable African American and Latino adults. These same white adults often have more wealth than African American and Latino families who have married and passed out of college and about the same wealth as families of color with a full-time worker. With such restrains and structurally flawed models of economy, is the American dream even American? or is it just like every 5 year old's dream to live in a castle only to be shattered by the harsh realities of institutionalised prejudice?
When people can't prove why they are right, they often engage in constructing an elaborate excuse as to why the other might be wrong. That's how myths form. A common misperception is that people of color are not sufficiently knowledgeable or responsible with money, and therefore the racial disparity in homeownership and wealth is because of conspicuous consumption on their part. Research indicates that this, too, is a myth. American African household spend less money than white households with comparable incomes, yet white households still possess greater wealth.
Developing and modifying social support programs in an equitable way requires a willingness to confront a legacy of structural racism and the consequent inequity in access to economic and social mobility.
Every few years, America catches a nasty “cold” that afflicts untold damage on its communities and citizenry. These colds aren’t always pathological, and they manifest in different forms. Slowly, the saying transformed to - "when America catches a cold, the blacks get the flu". The Great Depression may have given rise to a plethora of problems but nothing rose as high as the vast racial gap. While Hurricance Katrina managed to devastate and shake up the entire economy, the socio-economic impact on the black community were staggering.
So what happened when America caught the coronavirus? who caught the cold ? The carnage that the "cold" of coronavirus has brought has wreaked the nation’s most vulnerable - the blacks community.Blacks in about every state with racial data available have higher contraction rates and higher death rates of COVID-19. In Louisiana, Blacks represent about one-third of the state population but 70% of COVID-19 deaths. Speculations suggest that the pre-existing medical conditions and structural reforms have led to this dispropotionate suffering. To address this issue and correct it, the living conditions of the black community must be improved - including an improvement in recreational facilities as well as housing facilities to reduce the population in densely populated areas.
America isn't the only player in this monopoly of letting others down. There's Australia, the UK, Malaysia and even countries like Canada. The impacts of structural rascism is transnational and widespread. The only way to correct it to correct yourself from within. Sorry, buddy, there's no other way. Kill it at a internalised level, then it would go down at a interpersonal level and slowly would fade away at a institutional level and before you know it, its disappeared from a systemic level. To think of it, racism is just colour right? If all of us were colour-blind it wouldn't exist. So live in a colour blind world to make our world more colourful.
Our lives are like the GCSEs you have written. When you know something is wrong or even feel something is wrong you ought to correct it. And even if it is right (and I say this upholding my Indian mindset and inexplicable urge to be perfect) without rechecking it, it still seems incomplete. We need to recheck our lives and our methods for the same satisfaction. The satisfaction of being good humans. We all need to strive for the verified tick next to names. Validate your life before it becomes invalid.