As we watched in horror the public execution of George Floyd , the words of Frederick Douglas could not ring truer, “No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”
There is something magnificently wrong when people have to beg for decency. That is exactly what we are hearing people cry out for — just decency.
When people are deprived of decency reactions will vary. Some will march peacefully, some will take a knee. However they choose to respond, their innocence of having an ordinary summertime life is stolen from them because of the pressing need to scream out for justice and equality.
Over the last several years , I have argued about the lack of local programming targeting the local minority population. This occurs even after minority dollars are spent locally at local businesses who in turn use a portion of that money for advertising through those entities with our dollars financing our own elimination. I have often wondered what the reaction would be if there were no country, rock, or talk radio to listen to and why it is always people of color that seem to be the ones invisible.
When these circumstances are allowed to exist and manifest you are setting up the parameters for the George Floyd incidents to occur, though not as great, you are messaging that minority existence, happiness, and well being is not as important as majority life. From the time that young black boys grow from their early developmental years to their teen years, they grow learning that society is messaging that a black life is not as valued as the majority life. The dangerous aspect of that is when that message sips into the mind of just a few, it becomes easier for that mind to conclude that someone else that looks the same has less value as well resulting in the abuse of someone looking strikingly similar. When we accommodate and compensate for everyone, we are teaching young people that love has no color, that love has no boundaries. Where there is right applaud, where there is wrong speak up because silence makes you an accomplice. It’s not enough to be non-racial, in today’s world you need to anti-racial.
Charlie Thomas, Lima
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