I had a blog post ready for today. I was ready to post a witty, lighthearted, funny post. But i couldn’t post it. The news about Sandra Bland, has completely took over my thoughts, over the last couple of days, so i decided to start a fresh and write this post.

The #BlackLivesMatter movement has, increased incredibly due to the constant abuse that ethnic minorities, more often than not, black people receive from the police. But it’s not just a minority issue, Caucasian people are also being harmed by police too just at a lower rate & usually of a lower class background (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2563445/Georgia-teen-holding-Nintendo-Wii-controller-shot-police-thought-holding-gun.html).

Why is this still an issue in today’s society? Why is it a known fact that ethnic minorities are disproportionately targete; yet it is seen in many communities, as a part of the system? Not only in the US but also in the UK. In addition its not about avoiding the police & their racial profiling by changing the way we look in order to conform to societies views of what ‘decent’ people look like. For example, parents shouldn’t have to tell their children: don’t wear a hood, baggy pants, flashy jewelry, a long thick beard, locks etc, because they seem to derive from either people looking too ‘urban’ or people who follow particular ‘dangerous’ religions, such as rastafarianism or Islam. We shouldn’t be riddled with the burden of making sure, in particular black and Asian men, look a certain kind of way, in order for them to not be labelled a; hoodlum, thug, criminal, terrorist etc. They way people look is not the problem and is used as a mechanism to deflect from the real issue: racism in western society is at the core of it’s existence & has not been resolved or reversed like people like to suggest.

Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Akai Gurley, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, John Crawford III, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Jordan Davis and many more have had their lives taken away by authorities, in situations where their executions should never have happened. Tamir Rice was only 12 years old and was shot by police only 2 seconds after they arrived to the area where he was playing with a toy rifle. How can anyone feel safe in a climate where police shoot first and ask questions later? Why cant they retreat, call for back up, use their taser, even wound people (like we saw in the case of Lee Rigby’s killers in the UK, the culprit was wounded and then brought to justice), before using deadly force. The distressing part is police are not brought to justice; we’ve seen it time and time again, even when the injustice is on video tape, it is still ignored and justified in court . I understand that the police put their lives on the line, aim to protect society and are often put in dangerous stuations; but that doesn’t give them a licence to kill innocent & unarmed people.

In the case of Sandra Bland, I have put myself in her initial situation many times. I am also a young, educated, black women, who knows her rights, who probably would have also caught an attitude, with someone who is obviously over exercising his power and impeding on my rights while doing so. The mystery of her alleged suicide has caused controversy, but my main view is that, either way the police are at fault. If she did commit suicide then the police failed to take care of her while she was in their care. If she didn’t then… that’s a devastating and dangerous situation.

Finally it’s not about race, it’s about the rights of the individual regardless of race. Whether your Black, Asian, White, Biracial or Other, your life matters! Its sad that black people still have to remind the world that we are humans, who deserve equal respect . I wrote this blog because it’s about awareness, not about violence or hatred, let your outrage bare a solution, not further pain x

To get involved;

https://www.change.org/p/national-action-against-police-brutality

http://blacklivesmatter.com/