WE REST OUR CASE.
By Brittany Gail Thomas, Esq., Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Yesterday, another law student of color went to class and endured another legal lesson that ignored the life lessons of racial injustice.
Yesterday, another attorney of color went to work and waited for advocates and allies of justice to say something, anything, about the life of another Black man being taken away. They waited in vain.
People have more to say about the right to bear arms than about liberty and justice for all. More to say about trans lives than holding these truths to be self-evident that all men (women, people) are created equal. Less to say about Black lives mattering than they do about their inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And as time waits for no man, woman, child, or human, the silence of self-proclaimed allies is deafening.
The thoughts and prayers provide a temporal resolve to an ongoing crisis. Feelings of outrage and being sick of it by our white counterparts trump the true anguish of the people who actually have to survive all of this. How many more times do we have to say it? Racism and the institutional processes that reinforce it and its ugly counterparts must be dismantled.
Muslim women are harassed while wearing their hijabs at local convenience stores. Asians around the country are being attacked and killed without warrant. Trans womxn continue to be killed at an alarming rate and Black trans womxn are most likely to be killed. Latinx men, women, and children remain in cages at the border. Black people are under constant attack and find themselves continuously facing the trauma from the systemic institution of slavery, Jim Crow, and this “post-racial America.”
Video cameras are everywhere, they keep on rolling, and yet there still is no change. Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old boy, was shot dead, while his hands were in the air, by Chicago Police (i). Daunte Wright was shot dead with a gun, instead of shocked with a taser, as the air freshener hung from his rear-view mirror in Minnesota (ii). In Virginia, a Black US Army Lieutenant was stopped and accosted by police during a traffic stop in the country that he serves (iii). In a South Carolina neighborhood, a white male Army Staff Sergeant followed, preyed upon, and assaulted a young Black man as he walked in his own neighborhood (iv).
What have we learned?
Trayvon Martin. Amir Rice. Eric Garner. Sandra Bland. Breonna Taylor. Oscar Grant.
Atatiana Jefferson. Andres Guardado. Joshua Cooper. Anderson Retic. Ahmad Arbery.
Alton Sterling. Rekia Boyd. Philando Castile. Antonio Valenzuela. Jacob Blake. George Floyd.
These names do not even crack the surface of the pain, anguish, and trauma of the post-racial America that has failed us once again. There are so many other names that we simply do not know.
Then, there is wonder why Black and Brown communities distrust the government, political process, and the police. Why trust when your life does not matter enough to be protected and valued with the same level of care and decency of those who are white? Why trust when police killings continue to happen over and over and over again? Why trust when our cries fall on deaf ears and our blood is so easily washed away?
Meanwhile, our allies pick up and lay down their concern about racism as easily as the click on their technological screens. Further laying the responsibility of finding the solutions to these problems, that we did not create, at our feet. What will be done about this? The impact is ever-present even though most of us try to ignore it. But when you are Black, Brown, a person of color, you cannot ignore it. It is our inescapable reality.
This is why THE COLOR OF EXCELLENCE™ exists - for these moments of silence, alienation, unexplainable exhaustion, and ongoing trauma that we deal with for just being who we are.
We will neither rest nor be silent in the face of injustice. Not in the courtrooms that we advocate in. Not in the law schools that we matriculate in. Not in the nation that we live in. WE REST OUR CASE.
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(i) https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2021/4/15/22383392/adam-toledo-shooting-video-released-chicago-police-bodycam
(ii) https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/15/us/daunte-wright-minnesota-shooting-thursday/index.html
(iii) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56707979
(iv) https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2021/04/14/white-army-officer-charged-with-assault-after-shoving-black-man-in-viral-video/?sh=4b2cb8881001
