End Racism Now!

The mural "End Racism Now" painted in yellow, along W Martin Street in downtown Raleigh. Photo by Luke Keeler.

I wrote this in response to a long back and forth discussion to an individual on Facebook about their beliefs of the confederate monuments and flag and police reform in our country and how their talking points of all lives matter and black on black crime just deflect the underlying issue.

By bringing up the whole concept of black on black crime, you are deflecting again from the baseline issue. It's the same thing when you say all lives matter, as you are deflecting from the issues being raised around the Black Lives Matter protests, but when it comes to the history of the civil war and slavery, we have to agree that slavery and the reasoning of the confederates fighting against the United States is evil. The confederates stated, "the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition." This statement is inherently evil and nothing that should ever be celebrated. The hundreds of confederate flags, statues, monuments and memorials symbolize this hatred and have been used to keep blacks oppressed and used as a reminder of white supremacy. I understand that you want to remember the soldiers, but there are many other ways you can celebrate and remember their lives, whether through a local or national cemetery like Arlington, but we can not celebrate those men or the ideals and values they stood for, especially in a public space. It is extremely important that we truly listen to other people when they speak, especially now with the Black community. When was the last time you spoke to a black person and asked them what the flags, statues and monuments mean to them and what they feel these monuments represent? We aren't able to speak to individuals who were slaves and hear their viewpoints today, but we can speak with black people who have lived through segregation and we can learn from their experiences. Sometimes we think segregation was forever ago, but in reality it was less than a generation ago so we have the opportunity to speak with individuals who lived through that awful experience of separate, but equal. We can all say we aren't racist, but we live in a society that systematically suppresses other races within our own government systems. It will take us all working together to change that and it starts by understanding our white privilege. Institutional racism has been written into the backbone of this country by the existence of institutional systemic policies, practices, laws and economic and political structures which place minority racial and ethnic groups at a disadvantage. That's why these protests will continue and we will continue having these discussions over and over again until there is change. I encourage you to watch "13th" the documentary on Netflix regarding the 13th amendment and systemic racism. 

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-- Luke Keeler