The current state of affairs in our country saddens me. I was raised to love and respect everyone. A person’s skin tone was just that, their skin tone. It has nothing to do with who they are as a person. As humans, we all have the same organs, our blood is red and we all experience the same feelings of sadness, joy, pain and injustice when we are treated unfairly.
I feel as if the events of the past months have set us back more than 60 years. I did not live through the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s-60s. I only read about it in school. I naively thought the past was in the past. I was wrong.
The unnecessary death of George Floyd at the hands of a law enforcement officer has shed light on an ongoing issue in our country. And it is time for a change.
Our intolerance for one another puzzles me. In an age where we have countless campaigns about tolerance and acceptance, our society seems to be anything but.
As a mother, I worry about what the world is teaching our children and what kind of legacy we are leaving them. When I pray with my daughter each night, we pray for our family, our friends, our country and our world. Red and yellow, black and white they are precious in his sight.
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right.”
United we stand, divided we fall. It is time for the violence to end and for the healing to begin.
-Ashlee
This article appears in the July 2020 issue of Augusta Magazine.
