Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Strangling the Neck of Freedom by Faith Smith

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background or his religion. People learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” -Nelson Mandela

On July 5th, 2016, Alton Sterling was gunned down by two white Baton Rouge police
officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was an innocent Black man standing on the corner
selling CDs, even being known as the “CD man.” The police were not put away in jail. On
February 26th, 2012, Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, who claimed to had “felt threatened,” by Martin, who was unarmed. Zimmerman served a short sentence and was released from jail, when a murder sentence is at least ten years. Sandra Bland died in her jail cell and authorities claimed she “hung herself” in protest to her arrest. The list continues to go on and on with all our Black men and women being killed at the expense of a White man’s hands or the hands of authority. The repetitive excuse for these deaths is that the officers felt “threatened.” How can you be threatened by someone who is unarmed? How can you kill an innocent life just to kill? I feel like there is a mission going on, and that mission is to make the minority population become extinct. People celebrated Thanksgiving and paid their homage of thanks to their families, however what about all those who are locked away in prison? George Zimmerman killed a young high school boy and he only serve a short sentence and was quickly released from jail. However, Bernard Noble had to serve 13 years in prison over a marijuana charge. I think that this is a way to just keep minorities from ever prospering in this world like the rich White men and women are. They don’t want us to be on their level because, in my opinion, I feel they are afraid. The Black man and woman are so powerful. Our president of the United States before Donald Trump was President Barack Obama who served not one, but two terms in the White House. We have the power to run this world, and that makes a White man that is on the same
status fearful.

They are straining our necks of our freedom. We are human beings. We don’t deserve to
be treated as though we don’t belong here, because we do. We matter. Our lives matter just as much as the next person’s does. Just because we don’t share the same skin color as everyone else doesn’t mean we’re all not equal. We deserve to live the life we want, not get it taken away just because of how someone chooses to “feel.”

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