“But one of the things you’ve learned over the last four years is that there’s no longer any room for excuses…And whatever hardship previous generations endured-hardship and overcame”
– Barack Obama at Morehouse College.
Many African American young adults have found no reason to stay in school and get an education while they keep hearing in the news about the “stand your ground” excuse used by white officers who have killed young African American teens in our society.
Adam Hudson states: “1 black man is killed in the US every 28 hours by police or vigilantes: America is perpetually at war with its own people. From the war on drugs to the war on terror, law enforcement’s battle against minorities serves as pacification.”
A good example of this data is Jonathan Ferrell: a 24-year-old former Florida A&M University student and a football player who had his life taken away after trying to knock on neighbors’ doors. He was killed even though he had a chance for a better future and lost his life to a misunderstanding.
This isn’t the first time an officer or security officer has killed a human being. There have been common accidents, like seven-year-old Aiyana Mo’Nay and Stanley Jones from Detroit who were shot and killed by officer Joseph Weekley. Aiyana didn’t do anything wrong except open her door to see what all the racket was about, to see what all the screaming and noise was about. She didn’t know that opening that door was going to get her killed. Officer Joseph Weekley didn’t ask her a thing to see who she was, or why she opened the door. Instead he fired a gun right at her causing her to be rushed to St. John’s hospital where it was pronounced that she had lost her life.
The truth is: how are we, as people in this world and in this type of society, going to go ahead in our future, if our society isn’t letting us go ahead due to all this unnecessary killing and violence? Why would little kids, teenagers, and even older people in this society want to do good with their life, if they are seeing people that are supposed to protect us and make us feel safe do the opposite? These police officers aren’t doing their jobs right. They aren’t going around arresting the bad guys, the people who are hurting this society. Instead they are accidentally killing the people who have an education, have a family, have a good future ahead of them. They are not just killing a human being, but they are killing someone’s child, someone who means the world to people. They are killing innocent people who may not be involved with violence at all. Do some of these victims get any justice? No, some don’t. Officers get away with the deaths they have caused. President Obama, and other people that may agree with him, can’t just say that we as people are making excuses to not go ahead in our future because that’s not the truth. Even if we try to go ahead with our future, our society still has a way to pull us back.
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