I CAN’T BREATHE

“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, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” – Nelson Mandela

Erica Garner was on a train from Queens when she learned about the news of her father being brutally choked to death by NYPD officer, Daniel Pantaleo, in broad daylight. Eleven desperate cries of, “I can’t breathe” were made before Eric Garner finally succumbed to racial discrimination and white supremacy. In the protests that followed, “I can’t breathe” became the rallying cry all over the world for the people protesting against such kind of brutality by the hands of white people against the lives of people of color. Convicts of the Central Park Jogger Case were merely teenagers when they were coerced and tricked into falsely confessing the crime they never did. Once again, the NYPD detectives proved to the world that black lives held trivial importance in their perspectives. Very recently, yet another case of racial supremacy with its victim as George Floyd,46, has stirred up the emotions of fear, hatred, and disgust amongst the people of color residing in the United States. While the rest of the world hears them as well as stands against any kind of racism, the US President and the US military continues playing the anti-role. 

Fifty-six years since the Civil Rights Act was passed in the landmark case of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States and even now people have to be reminded that black lives are as much important as any other life. Fourteen years of the Civil Rights Movement weren’t enough to make the white supremacists realize that what separates black and white are just a few shades of color. In the ‘March on Washington’, Rev. Martin Luther King, in his most well-known speech of “I have a dream” expresses how even after hundred years of freedom from captivity and slavery, black lives have still not gained their deserved equality. How even after so many years, Negros are still treated as foreigners on their land. He expresses a desire to free his own country from the chains of racial discrimination and remove the blindfold of racial supremacy so that the people of his country can see a sun that shines upon them the light of security in the sense of justice, freedom, and equality. 

Great African-Americans like Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, Mohammed Ali, and Usain Bolt have proved to the world that the tone of their skin cannot determine the level of achievement that they’re set to achieve. They have acted as the world leaders and have given not only the people of their community but also to the rest of the world, hope, and strength that we never knew we had. In the end, it is deeply saddening to see that the world needs a hashtag movement like #blacklivesmatter to be reminded of the fact that the color of the skin doesn’t make them any less capable because in truth, not just black, but all lives matter. In the current era, when the world has advanced itself in so many ways, there are still people out there fighting for their basic right, i.e., to live. Now is the time to stand united against racism as a whole because no matter how forward we move, we will never reach true potential for as long as racism exists to hold us back. We all should see eye to eye when we say that the human race is the only race that should be given the utmost supremacy, for Rosa Parks said, “I believe there is only one race- the human race.”