The man in the mirror
As I stood at the end of the first memorial for Georges Floyd, 8 minutes and 46 seconds felt like an eternity. Tears were pouring down my face. Why? I felt sadness and anger for the unnecessary death of man, sadness for the family, incomprehension that people whose duty is to protect others are responsible for acts of cruelty leading to death, and sadness at my own lame actions against injustice.
This is one of the reasons I fully support my daughter’s movement ‘Our Voices’. It is one way of speaking out against injustice. It also encourages change at grassroots. People from all walks of life, young and old, are taking part because there is no excuse for racism: they don’t want to suffer from the effects of racism and they don’t want others to be subject to it either.
Most of us will never kill another human being: however, words and attitudes can also have a devastating effect as illustrated by the conversation Lauren had with one of her ex-students regarding acting lessons: Lauren had unwillingly hurt someone’s feelings by stereotyping races in her courses. Lauren is willing to change: she did not attempt in any way to justify herself and was willing to take on board the comments in order to change.
Isn’t this what each one of us should do too? Shouldn’t we all take a step back, have a hard look at ourselves to see what attitudes, opinions, reactions … in our own lives need to be changed so, at the very least, we respect people who are different to us? It’s not just the ‘whites’ that need to do so: we all need to no matter what color our skin is (Mel B. in her book ‘Brutally Honest’ states that she suffered from racism from both whites and blacks alike for not belonging to any ‘group’ due to the fact that she is ‘mixed race’), no matter what our background is. Every person deserves to be treated with dignity! There are no second class citizens. May change start with the man in the mirror!
Elaine