In 2020, we are witnessing a revolution waiting to come full circle, much like the pivotal Civil Rights milestones achieved during the 1960s. With no doubt in my mind, I believe that this has been a bomb waiting to detonate. For us to be enduring a global pandemic that’s already killed thousands and ​to simultaneously ​have innocent Black lives be disregarded and murdered for what we know are ​racist ​reasons is disheartening, to say the least, but a particularly deadly combination – literally. If this doesn’t disgust you and prompt reflection, I don’t know what else will. This country has and continues to rely on the exploitation of people of color and continues to torment the Black community.  

Leaving the Bay Area for college last year and stepping on campus was a definite culture shock. For the first time in my life, I was exposed to more White people and Conservatives than ever before. I believe that everyone is entitled to believe what they want to believe, so long as it doesn’t endanger people’s lives. But to hear people defend this country – a country that perpetually turns a blind eye to the pain, violence, and suffering it has created rendered me speechless. To know that people still believe that America is the land of opportunity and the free or a cohesive melting pot where racism isn’t prevalent anymore is not only a claim that lacks substantial evidence, it is completely contrary to our current events, not to mention our history. Even with this being said, I recognize and express gratitude for the privileges that America has provided contrary to how it may be in other under-developed third world nations or war ridden countries. We live in a country that does provide great benefits to some but not all, and to know that we’re ​still​ divided by race and have a social caste system that determines how we are treated? This is unjust, not to mention a violation of our basic God-given rights and illuminates just how much more work there still is to be done.

Racism is as pervasive as ever. It continues to be ubiquitous in people of ​all races in America – not just White people. The introduction and acceptance of political correctness has been utilized in a way to censor what people really want to say or do, but when you’re concealed behind a fake Twitter account, when you’re away from the public where there’s no cameras, when you’re in an environment where hatred is welcomed, the rhetoric of racist bigots from not only still exists, it is encouraged and embraced. In no way shape or form should sitting on the sidelines and being a spectator to racism be tolerated. How can we claim to be an allies if we give consent to the catastrophes jeopardizing our Black brothers and sisters? If we sit in silence as Black bodies are mutilated and Black people are overtly and systemically oppressed? 

Even if we cannot experience the agony that Blacks feel, we cannot condone what is going on. We cannot live in our own confined box in a mystical land where we are not affected. As a non-Black POC, I realize my privilege, but I don’t want to make this a competition nor do I want to take the focus off of Black lives and their fight for their lives. I realize that this routine, this centuries-old routine, of innocent Black people being killed will not end if we continue to be bystanders – observing their trauma and oppression and doing nothing about it. We cannot just simply speak things into existence or  be social media activists. We, as POC’s, must introspectively confront our own underlying hatred, discrimination, racism, and all the other -isms that exist. We must break free from our complacency just because ​we, ourselves, are not dead​. We must write a new chapter to the book that’s been written for us. We can change. Our past shapes us, but it does not have to define us. America has a long way to go. It will be substantially different than the “great again” America Trump advocates for, but we can make America “great” in a way it has never been. The greatness that was embodied by MLK, Malcolm X, The Black Panthers is a greatness we can aspire to once more and perhaps, even exceed. We have a long way to go, but first and foremost, we must go.