Mark W.rites

systemicracism

Scene in front of a school with a group of Black students climbing the steps as they enter the building. Front and center is a boy with a large afro and a vividly-patterned dress shirt with a butterfly collar. Near him is a girl in a nice flowery shirt with a concerned look on her face, being comforted by an adult. Behind him some other students are approaching, and behind them are a sea of white people near an iron fence, protesting their approach.

I don’t know that I have ever told this story to anyone, other than my wife, but there are a handful of people around my age who may remember it well.

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Scene of a protest with a crowd of people (mostly Black) lying down on the ground. In the front, one Black man in a t-shirt and fedora is kneeling and looking at the ground with his hands raised as if being confronted by police.

My entire being has been rife with emotion today. From the moment I witnessed the institutional murder of Alton Sterling, my lens of the day was dramatically altered. I waded through an endless stream of tweets and posts about bullshit that seems meaningless in the wake of yet another murder which is, really, a slow leak in the sea of American genocide.

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Young Black girl with braided hair, wearing a soccer kit and sitting cross legged in a Pugg soccer goal with her hands folded in a meditation pose while grinning widely.

I have been wanting to write this article for many days, but haven’t been able to properly formulate my thoughts. It’s emotionally and psychologically challenging as a fellow human being, but it’s concerning to me on a personal level as well. You see, I’m a white man with five children — and three of them are black.

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