I have so many thoughts on what I see going on in America right now.......
That video and the spate of killings leading up to it are all a visceral reminder of how far we still have to go in our fight for equality.
As many of you know, I am from Trinidad and Tobago, a majority POC country (with race issues of its own) BUT I have also personally experienced racism in alot of my travels that broke me down to my very core.
I know what it is like to fear for my life as I walked down a lonely street being followed by drunken white men in vehicles shouting racial slurs, throwing things at me, not knowing what they were going to do to me, but knowing that whatever they decided to do, there was no one to save me. The takeaway here is this did not happen in America guys, this happened in Leamington Spa in the United Kingdom....... not only once either.....
I say this to shed light on a stance I see some non US folk taking on social media. Newsflash: Racism is not a phenomenon that is peculiar to the US. I can actually give you more examples of racism that I have encountered as a young black woman in different countries. We need to stop looking at this as an American problem while we live in our proverbial glass houses. This is at its very core a human problem.
If I had to relive those moments, where I genuinely feared for my life on a daily basis, I honestly do not know how I would cope. Yet this is the reality for MANY. People are sending their sons, husbands, daughters etc out every day not knowing if they will return home.
The violence you see is the response of a people who are fedup, fedup of being unheard, fedup of placing their trust in a system that is built to oppress and keep them from succeeding. You may not agree with their actions and that is your right, but you also cannot tell them how they should react either.
I may just be another cosplayer on your feed here to dress up and entertain I guess, but I am a black woman first and foremost.
Black Lives Matter
Please help my friend Kay Bear to get her page back!!! Like and share if you can to get the word out pls, fb banned her old page :(
www.facebook.com
