Reflection 4: How Can We Write Differently?
Hannah Reed
As an active member of society one can both see and feel the systemic racism in our country. I myself am a Black woman that has felt this society root against me. I have seen with my own eyes the police abuse their power and torment the Black community. As a child my parents tried their best to shield me from the realities of racism. It was not until I became an adult began to stand on my own in society that I could clearly see the racism and injustices in our systems. Racism can be defined by the dictionary as:
: a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
also : behavior or attitudes that reflect and foster this belief : racial discrimination or prejudice
I don’t know why but reading this definition almost made me upset. This is because this definition summarizes my entire experience with racism into just a few pretty words. I feel it does not begin to do justice to what experiencing racism actually feels like. It is the most uncomfortable and perplexing experience. This is the nice version that does not at all begin to describe racism when violence is involved. Of course my feelings of anger only grew when I searched the same dictionary for the definition of “systemic racism”:
The word I entered wasn’t in the dictionary… of course. This is the perfect example of society’s behavior towards systemic racism. Systems we know are biased, hurtful, and even dangerous towards people of color yet they remained unfixed. Healthcare, the justice system, housing, financial institutions, and education are just a handful of examples of systemic racism. Black people and other minorities struggle in all of these categories to gain equal treatment as their white counterparts. Suburbs filled with upper and middle class white Americans do not have to worry about any of the above. They ultimately know that they are protected by the government. Whereas Black people, including myself, see the government continue to use and step on them.
I, like many others in this country, felt physical pain after learning about the death of George Floyd. I refused to be traumatized further and actually watch the video of his death. Yet I could not escape seeing the video go viral. This man’s poor death was plastered on the front of every social media platform, newspaper, magazine, and news broadcast. I can only help but think that this behavior is encouraging the desensitization of Black people being killed by police.
I read an article and tried to answer the question: “What Is Your Reaction to the Days of Protest That Have Followed the Death of George Floyd?” Unless you lived under a rock you are aware that BLM protests continued throughout the summer and some (like in Downtown Detroit) moved into the fall. I participated in as many marches and protests as I possibly could throughout the summer. I was sad to see them die down, along with BLM being a trending topic on social media. I feel like now we have returned to a sleeping society that acknowledges a problem, but does nothing to correct itself. The problem with this notion is that many people don’t know what to do or how to help.
Every year the police kill about 1000 people, this has been ongoing since 2015.
The Washington Post states:
Although half of the people shot and killed by police are White, Black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate. They account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population, but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of White Americans. Hispanic Americans are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate.
I think that articles such as the Times and Washington Post are setting a very important example of not only covering these stories, but they encourage the hard conversations about racism, systemic injustices, police brutality, etc., they also are continuing to update their statistics. I do not think we will write better as a society until those writing can first acknowledge there is a problem, and make the decision to consistently cover stories from more than just the white privileged perspective.