Please ask yourself, why was there rioting? Martin Luther King, Jr. told us, “Rioting is the language of the unheard.”
No one wants to see rioting. I’m certain you mean to be an ally and mean your words with compassion. However, we should be more concerned about the reasons for the screaming pain driving the rioting. We need to be more concerned about the level of hurt and cruelty which drives such cultural convulsions as rioting.
Why did the murder of George Floyd spark rioting?
How long have communities of color tried to do things “the right way” only to be told they are wrong to do it at all? How long do they remain passive and peaceful as they watch their children slaughtered by a system waging war against their black and brown bodies… denying them their inalienable right to “LIFE, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?”
Consider that about every two to three months, for the past decade, another unarmed black or brown life was taken by police.
Consider the recent news of a black business owner, who called the police and told them he had stopped a robber in his own store and was holding him at gunpoint until the police could get there to arrest the suspect. What did the police do when they arrived? What did police do after the black business owner identified himself on the scene to them and identified the robber? They attacked, beat, and handcuffed the black business owner.
Consider Breonna Taylor. She was sleeping in her own home when armed men, with no forewarning of their entry, stormed into her home like they were taking a beachhead. When her boyfriend exercised his 2nd Amendment rights to bear arms in defense of his home and life against unknown assailants, Breonna Taylor’s life was brutally taken by police who had not identified themselves.
How long do we expect our black and brown brothers and sisters to quietly and meekly stand under the battle-charge of a national police system waging war against black and brown bodies?
Here are just some of the names of unarmed black and brown people killed whose names we’ve learned over the past decade. Say their names. Say each one and think of those loved ones who will never see their faces again. Say their names and spare a thought for the mothers who will never hug their child again. Say their names and pray for their children who will never understand why their skin color was a death sentence. We should say each and every one of their names every single day for ten years — that’s what our black and brown fellow citizens have been doing for the past decade.
Say their names. This is why there was rioting.
