We Are Still Tired.

I wrote this post two years ago. TWO. It still holds true today, because our lives matter and this kind of violence should not only be condemned immediately, but there need to be real, tangible ways to mitigate this kind of thinking. We are tired. We are tired of having to explain, experience, and endure white supremacy with little to nothing being done to rectify the situation. There is a real need for facing what this ugliness is multiplying across the country, racist terror attacks.

I didn’t hear about what happened in Buffalo until Sunday. I was off in my own world, seeing friends and catching up. When I saw the news I was gutted. A grocery store. One of the most neutral, benign spaces. A place you would least expect to be targeted by a malicious evil with a gun. He knew what he was doing and even apologized to a white man he pointed his gun at. It’s disgusting. It’s devastating. And it keeps happening. People who look like my family, who look like me, getting murdered for no reason other than their skin tone.

No more sugarcoating the issue or insisting there’s somehow nuance here. No more mental health assumptions or scapegoating random things as reasons for the hatred. We simply cannot ignore that racism is a national emergency and there needs to be a serious plan on facing it. Do you know how that’s done? Education. And do you know who is trying to keep this education from happening? People who don’t have to worry about their brothers, sister, family members, friends being shot for the color of their skin. People who are unable to fathom that hatred exists in levels that are not only violent but deadly. They are in denial and their denial is literally killing us.

So now what? Now that 10 humans lost their lives this weekend because of racism, can we face this problem head on? Can we start asking the tough questions about why this happen? Most importantly, can we teach history as it really happened and help people understand the implications of the past and how we simply cannot go backwards? What happened upstate in Buffalo is not the first and it won’t be the last terror attack on the black community. How can we make sure it doesn’t happen again? This is the big question our local, state, and federal governments should be asking. If they’re really there to protect people what does that mean and how can we hold them accountable? We can’t keep hoping things will just change. Pressure put on officials, donating to organizations who are fighting white supremacy, using our voices to continuously cause a ruckus until some real revolution happens are just a few things we can do. But I will continue to say this, and it seems I’ll probably being saying it for the rest of my life, but this country cannot move forward without acknowledging it’s past, the oppression that continues today, and apologizing to the people it’s failed for so long.

I’m tired. How many times do we need to be reminded this country refuses to see the value in our lives?