God help me, I’ve been a coward long enough, carefully curating my words not to make enemies, not to alienate, playing the passive agreeable token minority.

So let’s call it what it is. Racism. Systemic, culturalized, indoctrinated, institutionalized racism.

You say it doesn’t exist, but I’ll show you my scars. You say it isn’t real, but I see my brothers and sisters slain by a lawless authority that lacks sufficient accountability, feeding itself by Orwellian double-talk and distancing rationalizations, covering for each other’s inner-circle by playing the ambiguity-card with Walter-White-monologues, jumping to words like “healing” and “calm down” without acknowledging the injury. No, I have met and trained (yes, trained) and I continue to work with many good upholders of the law: but they remain the best of them because of their submission to the very sanctity of which they uphold.

It’s unsettling to confront the possibility of prejudice in our hearts, but it’s there, and we have to talk about it, uproot it, from the top of every system on down.

I’m reading dozens of thoughtless, cruel, heartless comments that neglect the actual human life that is gone, that invalidate such an atrocity to validate the comfortable status quo. If you find yourself justifying a horrible death without recognizing its grief and horror, then you make yourself and that person less human. I cannot fathom such a startling deficit of compassion and empathy.

God forgive me, I get scared of hate-mail and “unfollows” when the streets are covered in blood. God forgive us, we try to win our little “political points” but neglect the tragedy of what is happening right now, to real families who deserved better.

I’m sorry, I was wrong, and I want to help.
— J.S.