Guilty Verdicts Aren't Enough

Artwork by @victoriaxcreates and @naimanfinity (bottom right)

 Yesterday I told myself that I would give myself the day to be relieved by the Chauvin guilty verdict. However today would be the one where I sat with the disappointment, the sorrow and the rage. What does it say about our nation that we held our breath, waiting for a verdict saying Derek Chauvin was guilty of a murder? There was video footage with his knee on George Floyd's neck for nine seconds. 

     This is what it means, that systemic racism is what built this country. The very forces meant to serve and protect, are killing us. Black, and Latino people are killed less than Native Americans by the police. This fact is widely ignored by the media. I think it's because if we acknowledge the most victimized, we will see just how dangerous it is to exist in this country as other. If you are white and reading this, understand the fear which we carry. I took a deep breath when George Floyd was given justice by a verdict. A verdict which could factually be no other way. 

I hate that I was surprised by the verdict. I am angry that once it was announced that the jury had reached a verdict, I was both ready to have a weight lifted off my chest but also ready to protest. If the verdict was not guilty I would need to explain it to my kids. If he was found not guilty I would have to give a presentation in my writing seminar as if I was anything other than broken. Yet this verdict came at the same time we were learning about, Ma'khia Bryant. A sixteen-year-old girl who was killed by a police officer in Ohio. Ma'khia called the police because she was about to be jumped. When the officer arrived, two girls were attacking her. She had a knife. Bodycam footage of the officer shows him firing four shots, hitting her in the chest. March 29, 13-year-old Adam Toledo was fatally shot in the chest by a police officer in Chicago. April 12, 20-year-old Daunte Wright was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, who claims she mistook her sidearm for her Taser. The same day, Anthony Thompson Jr. was shot and killed by police officers while at school. 

These are the stories which came out during Chauvin's trial where he was charged with the killing of George Floyd. These police killings are somehow shocking to me. At this time, when we spent all summer screaming that our lives simply matter. I think I allowed myself to hope. I remember George W. Bush saying that the problem in African nations wasn't AIDS or poverty but the hopelessness. How awful and dangerous it can be not to have hope he explained. But he has never been Black in America. He has never lived in a marginalized body. A body which is not seen as human but as disposable. So it is not dangerous for us not to hope. It is survival not to hope. It is safer not to. Because once you begin to believe that things can be better...I think we all know the end of that sentence. 

Then how? How do we teach our kids? I suppose I am asking for myself. Do I tell them all the horrors of the world or do I act as though those horrors are in the past? Or do I tell them the reality and somehow pray they remain childlike and full of wonder when I know how dangerous such an outlook can be? To be optimistic and carefree is a privilege that I have acknowledged I do not have. But what sort of a life is that? I suppose I can't be too far gone, as I am in law school hoping to protect those who cannot protect themselves but even then, what will I do? Work on police brutality cases? Does that mean that I am working with families and victims after the fact? As an activist, aren't I doing the same? Calling for change now, once the damage has already been done. Once lives have already been lost. 

After generations of this same fight, when do we admit we have not been drastic enough? And by drastic I don't mean more Black, Native American, AAPI, and Latinos marching on the streets. I do not mean people with disabilities putting themselves on the line to demand basic civil rights. I do not mean people who identify as queer sounding the battle cry. I mean white people. You are the ones who are missing from the fight. White people who are the experts in systemic racism, you are the ones who need to stop hoping and start doing- so the rest of us can finally believe. 

Our dreams at this moment is that white people recognize that our lives matter. What does that mean? That our killers will be subject to the criminal justice system when they break the law. But why are we still asking that you acknowledge that our lives matter? The demand I have is that we get the same opportunities. The same access to education, to food, to water, to home loans, to become debt free, to live in the neighborhoods with lawns and safety. I want to have the opportunity to vacation because I have job security. I am not asking to be able to wear my hair in the way it grows out of my head to get a job. I'm not asking because that is not a demand white people need to make, so I am just going to assume it is mine without any special legislation. I am telling you that I want access to promotions. I want to be president of a company that I didn't have to start myself. I want the privilege of being mediocre. I want to be able to dress, speak and act like I feel and not be labeled inferior or different but as I am. I'm asking--no I am demanding, because racism will no longer have any power over me.