Are you distraught by what our fellow Americans have done to our black American brothers and sisters over the last several weeks/months?
Can you “accept” what happened to George …
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Are you distraught by what our fellow Americans have done to our black American brothers and sisters over the last several weeks/months?
Can you “accept” what happened to George Floyd last week in Minneapolis, Minn.? Or Ahmad Arbery in Brunswick, Ga.? Or Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky.? Or Christian Cooper in New York’s Central Park?
How many names need to be added to this list before we Americans, every white, brown, yellow, red and black American, says “Enough!” and takes personal responsibility for these actions? We are all culpable. Yes, you read correctly; I am and you are, too. We all are.
How, you ask? By our acceptance of these murders as “just the way it is” or that those who committed these crimes “are not me.” But we are them. We are the American culture that we’ve spawned and maintain; we are the racial prejudice that is a link in that cultural chain that restrains our willingness to do something about these horrific crimes.
Black people in America today have become the Jews of Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s and ’40s. We are the German citizens who said “it’s none of my business,” “it’s somebody else’s problem,” “it’s somebody else’s job,” etc., etc.
I state here that it is me, that it is all of us, it is our problem and we must take ownership of it and act to fix it or it will continue forever to be a stain on America which proclaims “all men are created equal.” I do not suggest that you go to Minneapolis to stand with the protesters, or go to Washington, DC and march on the Capitol or the White House. But I do ask each of you to do something, something reasonable, something that establishes your commitment as one who stands with these Black Americans who have been killed in our cities, on our streets, something that represents you and where you stand on racism and unjustified murder.
I choose here, in this letter to my fellow Bristol residents, to state my commitment to support the advancement of racial justice in all ways possible. I commit to stand up against racism if I hear it or read it or witness it in my daily life.
In the words of Winston Churchill: “It is better to do something than to do nothing while waiting to do everything.”
E. Keith Maloney
Bristol