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fter two grand juries decided not to indict Darren Wilson, who killed Michael Brown, or Daniel Pantaleo, who killed Eric Garner, many Americans were shocked and bewildered about how such injustices can carry on in this country. This outrage was followed by phrases such as, “I can’t believe this is happening in America,” or “How is this happening?”
My response would be that, for years, black people in this country have been under siege by the powers that be. This level of brutality is nothing new and is only getting mainstream attention after the death of Mike Brown, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner, just to name a few. Earlier acts of violence against black people are often ignored or minimized by history books and general scholarship.
In the early 1900s, the reconstruction of the South led to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, who terrorized black families constantly by bombing black churches and kidnapping black children. In 1921, a group of white residents attacked the black Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma. This racially motivated attack was done in part to destroy one of the wealthiest black communities in the country. Hundreds of deaths were recorded. In the 1930s, black people were lynched and killed for simply trying to vote. In the 1950s, the Jim Crow era reached its peak, allowing police officers to wantonly invade black homes. The KKK also infiltrated the justice and legal systems and had representation in high levels of government. In the 1960s and 1970s, black people were denied equal access to quality schools of higher education despite the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. During this time, black people were also denied benefits from the GI Bill and denied access to loans for houses in white-dominated residential areas. Civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evers were assassinated as well. In the 1980s, the racist “war on drugs” started, which disproportionately targeted the minority community and still continues to do so to this day.
Today, black people are denied equal access to schools because of the gradual removal of affirmative action from the higher education system. Black people in America have to deal with racial micro-aggressions like terms such as “reverse racism” and “colorblindness” or being presumed to be a criminal or a thug.
Additionally, black people are still harassed by the police due to racial profiling and are sometimes murdered by the police without any justification or accountability.
On a personal level, it is difficult to live in a country where unarmed black people are killed and then have their character assassinated in the media.
It’s exhausting to see anti-blackness perpetuated everywhere I look, whether it’s on TV or through a friend’s snide comment or during a class lecture.
To even remotely begin to understand this experience, imagine losing someone you love, and a grand jury decides that your loved one’s life isn’t even worth putting his or her killer on trial. It dehumanizes you and disrupts the very essence of your being, which only gets worse as the pattern of police brutality continues to go unchecked in other parts of the country.
As a college student, my main concern should be meeting deadlines, finishing papers or cramming for exams. But what is the point when society has such a disdain for my skin color? Meanwhile, I see my white friends have the privilege of debating which cover of Frozen’s “Let It Go” is the best. And the disconcerting thing is that as the buzz surrounding Mike Brown and Eric Garner dies down, I will still live with debating whether to run in public while wearing a hoodie or walk into a store with a hat on.
I am afraid that even after Americans saw the videotape of Eric Garner being choked to death, many supposedly freedom-loving Americans will turn a blind eye to the issue of systemic racism, labeling it “not my problem.” This is the reality of America.
This is everyone’s problem. Failing to acknowledge, condemn or take direct action is the same as consent.
Harold Joseph is a UF political science junior. His columns appear on Fridays.
[The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the Alligator.]
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 12/5/2014]
