Your Voice Matters: Injustices Being Unsilenced from an Educators Perspective

If you are reading this today, then you have probably heard about all of the racial tension that is happening in our society right now, but this has long been an issue. As I sat to reflect on all that is happening in our society today, I now have come to terms with how my ancestors must have felt when they were beaten, raped, violated, and forced to work for free. Even writing this saddens me, because the truth of the matter is that many African American people today do not know who their ancestors are. You may be wondering why not? The simple answer is the slave trade. When African people were forced to come over to the Americas against their own will, we then became dismantled. We were taken away from our families, our home, our way of life. We went from being humans, to a price tag to sell to the next European that wanted to profit off of our free labor. This pain that Black people have suffered came way before George Floyd. We as a people have a history of suffering, but still bein

If you have turned on the news this week, or even taken a look at social media, it is a very good chance that you have heard about George Floyd's death, and Joe Biden's offensive statement towards Black people who support Trump. It seems that our world is becoming more and more desensitized, and racism is becoming a bigger issue. I think that we could even argue that not much has changed as far as racism from slavery. Think about it, the systems that dehumanized Black people during slavery, are the same systems that dehumanize them today, they just come in different forms. These forms could be seen by high incarceration rates of Black men, redlining Black people to keep them in certain living areas, Black people being killed and brutalized by White cops, and the list goes on and on. These incidents that are happening today are not to far off from what was happening in the past. The only difference is that society wants us to think we are all equal, because they do not put the t

We live in a society today where injustices are all around us. You turn on the news you see it, you go for a walk you see it, you go to work you see it, and it is something that has become the norm to hear about repeatedly, because it happens so frequently. In the mist of this, we as a society are constantly trying to figure out how to handle these issues that we see from day to day. We may ignore them because we feel like we do not have the solution, we may protest with others to get our point across, or we may find other outlets to express ourselves, while still feeling like we do not want to be seen as a radical. If you are a Black person, you know this struggle way too well. According to Du Bois, it is called the "Double Consciousness". Double Consciousness according to the Sanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is "inward twoness, putatively experienced by African-Americans because of their racialized oppression and disvaluation in a White-dominated society". Thi

If you have heard the story of Ahmad Aubrey, you probably have a lot of thoughts on this topic. You may be someone who feels that it had nothing to do with the color of his skin, and more to do with a person in a neighborhood that did not belong there. You may be another person who feels that it was absolutely about race, and because he was Black, he was then given an early death. Wherever you stand on this argument is totally okay. I am not here to bash anyones opinion on why they feel the way they feel, but because I am a educated African American women who has seen how race plays a huge role in what happens to people of color in society, I would be misleading my audience if I said that Ahmad Aubrey's blackness had nothing to do with why he was killed. In America, we have had a horrible history on dehumanizing people because of the color of their skin. We can see this through slavery, the KKK movement, the millions and millions of African American men who are in jail for non-viol

Healthcare is supposed to be a safe haven for everyone. It is supposed to be a place where people receive the medical attention that they need, so that they can live longer and healthier lives, but this is not always the case. There has been many studies that has shown that racial disparities amongst the healthcare profession still exists today. The reason why I say today, is because this is not an issue that just started, this is an issue that has been present for decades unfortunately. This injustice makes it nearly impossible for people of color to see the healthcare system as a safe haven. Instead, it could be viewed as a place that caters to white people more than people of color. You may be wondering where this issue has originated from, and why it still continues today. If these are the questions that are running through your head, then you are at the right place. Once upon a time there was a such thing as segregation. I know that we all know about this term if we ever took a