This week I became overwhelmed by my social media feeds at the amount of posts I was seeing concerning black people who had been killed or murdered by the police in America.
The case most in focus is the case of George Floyd detained by the police for allegedly using a forged cheque and subsequently died after an officer knelt on his neck for somewhere between 5 and 8 minutes according to reports. The officers in question, principally Derek Chauvin, should be executed as an example to all policemen, they are here to serve and protect, not to behave like thugs who murder innocent people. The police have a responsibility to preserve justice for all, they should be accountable to a higher standard than a regular person, so they too should be judged more harshly for wrongdoing.
The majority of decent people get rightfully upset and angry about these kinds of incidents, and groups like Black Lives Matter are continually standing up the the rights of black people who have had their civil rights abused. What strikes me though, is that we keep seeing these things happen, we get angry about the manifestations of racism and injustice, but have we really established what the root cause is.
I’d always assumed that racism today was linked to slavery, the misuse of the bible by so-called Christians, the Papal proclamations that appear assign perpetual servitude to our race – and of course these things are hugely relevant, but in approaching this subject what most people seem to be doing is just touching the surface of the problem and not getting to the root, like treating the symptoms of a disease, without providing an actual cure. People get emotional about the issue, and let’s face it, it’s difficult not to, but actually in the heat of emotion we miss the voice of The Spirit, and we often miss wisdom and knowledge. What has getting angry done, has it stopped these attacks? Has it changed the way white people view black people? Has it ensured that people who commit these crimes are tried with justice? Whatever the current strategy is needs a re-think, because clearly something isn’t working.