What is white privilege? What is Black Lives Matter? Recently I’ve been hearing a number of people say, “all lives matter,” which is true: every life matters. BLM isn’t saying one life is more important than another. The people in the BLM movement are trying to bring awareness and justice to multiple African-American lives that have been taken for no reason. Most people just want to turn away and pretend it didn’t happen or give the killers a slap on the wrist. BLM wants to bring consciousness to racism which is, sad to say, still alive in many ways. Parts of our own government are racist so that itself doesn’t set a good example. We are all human beings and everyone should be treated with the same love, kindness, respect and fairness. Black Lives Matter is just the start and name to something huge.
Not only are people being wrongfully mistreated and killed but people of all different colors are being unjustly arrested and prosecuted. Many people in the prison system today have been in jail for years for crimes that definitely didn’t deserve the amount of time they got. If a white person had committed those crimes, they may have gotten a lesser sentence. I personally was arrested a number of times and threatened with jail, but never got sent. As a white person, I’ve often wondered if I got more chances than others. According to the Innocence Project, thousands of people are in jail serving time for crimes they did not commit. The entire prison and justice system needs to be rebuilt and reformed.
I am an American citizen and am sick of watching the same cycles happen over and over. A reckoning is upon us and Black Lives Matter and the people who believe in it have voices. We will get our point across that racism will not be tolerated, that we will do everything we can to peacefully get our point across, educate, and solve these issues we are faced with.
Emma is student at Vermont Adult Learning’s Windham County Learning Center. She lives in Brattleboro.