Happy Thanksgiving!
It’s a phrase that has been leaving my lips all week. This week in particular has me happily delivering this greeting publicly, but privately shedding tears. Tough week.
This country was just knocked to its knees again by race. Why do events in Ferguson, MO (a few exits up the highway from where I grew up) weigh so heavily on our minds? Our lives are accustomed to patterns. Setting a schedule, washing the dishes, depositing a paycheck…some patterns we count on for our comfort and some we dread. Into which category does the killing of young Black men fall?
The names of the dead are too many, the cries for justice are too often and the families of these victims are too weary. When young Black men are marked for death and are considered disposable for so long, a pattern was to have formed like all others in life—eventually taking on the role of what we consider to be common sense. But we have the human race on our side. Enough human beings have their neighbors/sons/daughters/brothers/sisters’ humanity to protect and serve. I am thankful human nature reveals itself to make sense at times. Peaceful protests by hundreds and thousands in the name of justice happening across a nation built on race? For this I am grateful for a pattern that instead of promoting racial division, sparks a movement for change.
