“No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” This is a quote from the Martin Luther King Jr. I have a dream speech. He made this speech in 1963, he said those words over fifty years ago and we still aren’t at a point where everyone has justice. People still suffer from racism. It is better but still aren’t where we can be. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird we see Harper Lee show just what racism can do to someone.
Racism has affected our country so much. In 1865 there was an estimated 620,000 deaths, American deaths (Civil War Casualties). This was the cause of the civil war, a war that was caused by racism. We were at such a bad point that our country split in two and we fought against each other. “Approximately one in four soldiers that went to war never returned home,” in other words one fourth of the men fighting for racism died. We were killing each other because we couldn’t agree on a different man’s rights. Men we ripped from their homes to work for us. The civil war ended over 150 years ago, but we still are fighting this fight. Not as bad as we once did but we still haven’t come to a solution. We put a layer of paint on racism and said it went away, but this paint is see through and chipping. We still haven’t learned from our mistakes and we won’t until people take stands. There are good stands, for example Martin Luther King Jr. But there are also bad stands.
An example of a bad stand on racism is Jussie Smollett. He paid two men to orchestrate an attack on him. “The buddies told cops they purchased the rope for the noose recovered from Smollett’s neck after the attack,” It should not be okay to fake an attack and blame it on racism. He lied to everyone and made them believe that he was the victim of a racist attack but really, he is the racist one in this “attack.” In his statement to the police he stated, “He also said the attackers were likely white.” This statement was clearly racist. So, most acts that are supposed to stop racism, actually they can be the most racist.
Racism is something that has been around for over hundreds of years, and yet we still can’t seem to find a solution. But we have to try. We have to stop looking at people and make assumptions before we even meet them. We have to do this right, it will take time and effort, but it has to start with you.
Works Cited
Civil War Casualties. n.d. American battlefield. March 2019. .
Italiano, Laura. Jussie Smollett reportedly paid two men to orchestrate attack . 16 Februrary 2019. Page Six. March 2019. .
