Ask the Hard Questions, Listen to the Answers
Wednesday June 10, 2020 | Filed under:
I’m on a nonprofit board in Princeton, N.J., with a friend, Wilma, who gave me permission to share the story below of what happened THIS WEEK to members of her African American family. In light of the George Floyd protests, I encourage you to read it. This is real. Not a post from a friend of a friend. Someone I know. And this is what we need to be listening to and trying to really understand. Here is Wilma’s account:
Very early this morning, one of my nephews and his wife (in Mississippi) were doing their normal five-mile run. As they were running, a pickup truck passed them and then circled back. Three men got out of the truck and after blocking their running path to stop them walked over to them and each man pulled out his pistol, pointed their pistols at my nephew and his wife. They told them to lay on the ground and that after they left my relatives could get up and run home (at a very fast pace). The men recognized both my nephew (a very well-known attorney) and his wife (a prosecutor). They told them they had better not be caught running in that neighborhood again. (My relatives built their home in that neighborhood approximately four years ago.)
My relatives – especially the male ones – are scared to death and also very, very angry. The younger males are now at a point where they do not want to go out and are even more afraid of their parents going out – day or night.
It is impossible not to feel grief in the wake of George Floyd’s death. And it is impossible not to feel grief for our nation as we continue to witness anger, revulsion and frustration that George Floyd’s death is yet another in a long line of tragedy and injustice, and a painful reminder that the color of a person’s skin still determines how they will be treated in so many aspects of American life and culture. Fifty-seven years ago, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of a day when his “four little children would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Given our long history of racism and injustice in America, as well as the current violence and unrest going on all around us, it is hard to imagine that Dr. King’s dream will be fulfilled any time soon. We will never reach that dream if we continue to think of some people being less than another human being. There are no second-class citizens. We are all brothers and sisters – we are one human family.
We need to see each other as equally deserving of life, respect and dignity. We need to ask ourselves and each other hard questions and listen carefully to the answers.
Wilma