America is battling two diseases right now: COVID-19 and racism. And both are winning. It’s a sad turn of events. Now, more than ever, we need to be united. Need to be looking out for one another, supporting one another, caring for one another. We do that by wearing masks so that we don’t unwittingly transmit a deadly virus without knowing it. We do that by not hoarding toilet paper and other essential supplies. We do that by donating blood and plasma. And most importantly, we do that by staying home.
But staying home is not something that we can do right now. Not when police are once again abusing their power, targeting minorities, and unnecessarily using excessive force. Not when police are literally murdering innocent people in broad daylight and thinking that they can get away with it because of the simple fact that they have been empowered by a flawed system designed to protect them. And so people have taken to the streets. En masse. During a pandemic. All across America. And rightfully so.
Now this may rub some people the wrong way as personal property and places of business suffer the consequences of enraged mobs. But damage to bricks and mortar is the least of our worries. It’s the loss of human life that is the real travesty here. And in the illustrious words of AOC, if you are more upset about the loss of property than the loss of life than you are part of the problem. After all, this is a country built on a history of successful riots. The Boston Tea Party is proof of that. As is the fact that you have an eight hour work day and voting rights. At some point if the people in power won’t listen to you then you have to shout. And if they won’t listen to your shouts then you have to scream. And if they won’t listen to your screams then you have to make so much ruckus that they have no choice but to listen to you. No choice but to finally take what you have to say seriously. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that riots are the language of the unheard. And he was clearly right as he often was about so many other things. But unfortunately he’s not here to guide us through this moment and I worry that no one else is up for the task.
The other day CNN host Don Lemon asked what essentially amounted to a rhetorical question: who are our leaders? Right now, with our country in shambles, with racial tensions at an all-time high, with explosive powder-keg like situations erupting in nearly every major American city, who do we turn to? Certainly not the White House and a President hell-bent on sowing discontent and spreading violence. And so there really is no easy answer. No obvious choice. Right now we don’t have a modern day equivalent of a Martin Luther King Jr. No Gandhi or Mother Teresa either. Instead of a top down approach we might need to flip the switch. Turn to a grass roots approach. Listen to what our local community leaders are saying. Listen to what our elders are preaching. And if all else fails we can always turn to Killer Mike.
But in all seriousness we should listen to what he has to say. Listen to the emotional pleas coming from the mayor in Atlanta and from those on the ground in Minneapolis, where this all started. Where the completely unnecessary killing of George Floyd ignited all these racial tensions and exposed America for who and what it really is. For who we really are as a people.
The hope then becomes that when faced with this reality, when faced with the ugly truth of how divided we are, that we take the necessary actions to course correct. That we rise above our preconceived notions and band together like we really should have been doing all along. That we really do become the UNITED States of America. Because if we don’t then COVID-19 becomes the least of our worries. If we don’t we fall victim to the deadliest disease of all: racism.
Let’s end racism once and for all.
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