Racism, standing up, and saying nothing

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Porsheee's avatar
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    Let me start off by saying that this is going to be a journal about something both very personal and very public, something that has nothing to do with me and something that has everything to do with me. I just have a few things to say about racism, standing up, and saying nothing.
 
    My school has been in turmoil for two weeks. For two weeks, I've gone to class, sometimes pretending like nothing happened, sometimes remembering everything happened. I didn't know what happened at first. I wasn't a victim, and I'm not in the same grade as any of the victimizers, so they were little more than blurred faces and obscure names. 

    In my school, a private Instagram was discovered consisting of deeply racism images and edits. Some of them did not target specific people, but many of them used pictures of actual fellow students—all of them black, most of them female. Some of the images and captions were violent. 

    The three 11th graders running the account were expelled. All of the people following, liking, and commenting were suspended.

    The last two weeks have been the aftermath, and yet it's been an earthquake in itself. People are angry; they are angry at the people who made the account, the people following it, and the people who said nothing for the two months it was active. 

    What does it mean to be a bystander? What does it mean to say nothing when people you see every day are not only laughed at but threatened and dehumanized behind their backs? 

    How do you meet them in the eyes? How do you ask them to borrow a pencil because you forgot yours, help them with an assignment, listen to them answer questions? How do you sit in the same desks? How do you walk down the same halls? 

    How can you do all this without shame? Without realizing that the people on the receiving end are there for the same reason as you—an education? How can you do all this, get caught, and feel guilty for your punishment and not your actions? 

    I slowly learned what happened, I learned their names, I learned the thoughts, the feelings. I learned who they were, what they meant to people. I learned that the junior class was now like a leaf in a flooding river because the people who did it were popular. They were people that were liked

    You cannot hate someone more than someone you once loved; this holds more meaning now than it ever had before.

    I don't know what to do. I don't know exactly what it means to be a good ally, how I can share my voice without covering others. I know that being a white girl, I cannot ever experience what any of the victims do on a daily basis. Even in a place as liberal as mine, there is hate. There is racism.

    When is it that someone can be seen as the person they truly are? At what point does someone stop themselves and realize that what they do, what they think, is wrong? Not just morally but fundamentally? 

    Today I missed class to sit in the middle of what I hope is change. I don't know where we go from here. I can't even tell you exactly what I believe is right and wrong anymore because it's twisting, and sharp, and hard to see, but I can tell you that this school has let this go on for too long, and now it will stand for nothing but the future and present every student deserves.

    Don't be silent. Call your friends out. Do not be a bystander.

    And when you have the chance, stand for what it is you believe in. Because sometimes the only person who can tell your story is you. 

© 2017 - 2024 Porsheee
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Senwe45's avatar
I honestly can only hope to answer one of the questions, and that is that some people really don't realyze that others are, indeed, people like themselves. It's just a game to them, a funny one because 'hey look at this, ahahahaha'. And the sad part is that even adults act like that, even adults seem to be so incredibly out of touch with the fact that there are others outside their circle that will hurt because of their actions.