Dear God, stop posting videos of Black people being murdered BY ELLE PROPP Staff Reporter The Black Lives Matter movement has surged to the frontline of American news. For me, its been at the forefront my whole life. Racially motivated police brutality has been an issue since the idea of policing began in America. After the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis white police officer on May 25th, 2020, worldwide protests broke out against police brutality. Coming with the revival of the Black Lives Matter movement, who advocate against such instances, comes the rise of social media activism. With the nationwide attention and shrouded behind activism posts however, lie a devastating impact on the Black community. I think undoubtedly, being Black in the peninsula isn’t that easy. If it isn’t driving an hour and a half to find someone who can actually do my hair, it’s the fact that I can’t even find cajun hot sauce in any of the grocery stores around here. It’s the fact that I had my first Black teacher in Junior year. Sequoia, which is located in almost the exact midpoint of the peninsula, isn’t subject to any change in. Though we may boast our racial differences, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, Black students make up about 1% of the student body. In fact, we’ve got the lowest percentage out of the entire district. So for the 99% that are reading this, welcome. I want to talk to you for a bit about where digital activism goes awry. Let me bring it all the way back for a second. Disney’s Princess and the Frog premiered in the United States on December 11th, 2009, three days before my seventh birthday. A few months prior, one way or another, I found myself with the knowledge that this film had Disney’s first Black princess. We had a mermaid, before we had a Black princess. I didn’t know the deeper implications of this, as I was a kid who could not yet divide, or multiply. But this fact stuck with me. I say this, to inform you that this is not a normal burden for a first grader. A normal burden is forgetting to capitalize the beginning of a sentence, or quarreling over tetherball rules. Why did my burden have to be race? Why did I know that that was wrong? When I told my older cousins this fact, trying to seem all adult like I thought they were, they shrugged. They didn’t see a problem. “Really?” I thought to myself. “We had a fish princess before this?” I was eleven when the Fergueson unrest broke out, over the fatal shooting of Michael
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Photo credit: Pexel.com Brown, by a white police officer. The unrest when I knew my classmates had publicly used began in the end of the summer, when I was racial slurs against Black people without and just starting middle school. My classrooms repercussions, when my hair was pulled and were bubbly and upbeat, a direct contrast prodded after being deemed an afro, when to my home life. Fergueson was a common I was told that I wasn’t Black enough to even discussion voiced with concern, and disgust enter Oakland, as I was told “Black lives don’t between my Black relatives. Yet no one spoke matter.” I tried to laugh along, I tried fighting about it in school. I learned the social precedent back, I tried to take it seriously, but nothing that summer in the white-dominated parts of worked to stop the feeling of being less-than. I the Bay Area; Black culture, Black news, and accepted the losing battle. Black ideas are not celebrated. They are not I’ve been pretty good at staying out of discussed. This was further confirmed by the social justice since then. This hasn’t been able perplexed stares I would get as we read To to be the case since May 26th, 2020. The world Kill A Mockingbird, discussed the civil rights has become flipped, replacing cold glances movement, or even spoke about rap music as with empathetic ones. It is now taboo to not a whole. It was almost as if I were a museum speak about the gross instances of racism in display, like I could spit out bullet pointed our country, executed by our police. From information that prove that Black people do being shrouded in the shadows, the Black exist here. community has become the new spotlight. If that alienating Social media has experience at the quite literally erupted beginning of middle with videos, graphics, school taught me information posts, anything more, it calls to actions, action Black Students make up about was to follow suit plans, to the point that 1% of the student body in the don’t-askany internet-based National Center for Education don’t-tell policy. I platform has become Statistics grit my teeth and the vessel for selfbore it as I was told education, especially I’d be the one who’d by non-Black peers. sit at the back of the bus, as comments about It’s almost comedic, in a so-sad-it’s-funny my father were scrawled into my yearbook. way, how I get to witness others learn about I gritted my teeth to what felt like the core things I already had to experience at a young in high school, when my hair was compared age. At this point, I feel like we should all to that of a sheep, when classmates loudly commemorate this by changing the Instagram perpetuated racist tropes, including but not logo into a brightly colored infographic about limited to watermelon and Kentucky Fried how to treat others of different skin tones Chicken in the middle of history lessons, with respect, because it’s so uncommon that it when I had to sit and interact innocently requires a how-to pamphlet.
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