The reactions we are seeing across the country are not about this recent murder in isolation, but instead the reactions of people who have been trying to play by the rules of a game that is rigged from the start. This occurs in the context of institutional racism that is alive and well in the United States. Their grief has been built on decades and centuries of highlighted acts like George Floyd’s murder. The grief they are experiencing is likely incomprehensible to most of us, and is not new. Locally, our hearts go out to the Tacoma Urban League, the Black Collective, the Tacoma NAACP, and other organizations designed to advance the work needed to move us to a more equitable community/world for Black people.
Floyd was, and other countless people of color are treated daily, to stand beside people of color, Black and Brown people in particular, and own my unearned privilege and use it for positive change. My friends and family of color are struggling in ways I couldn’t possibly understand, yet it is my responsibility, as someone who likely will never be treated the way Mr. Rainbow Center for Black Lives: Our Statement in SolidarityĪs a white leader of a civil rights organization, I have been struggling with how to publicly respond to the very public murder of George Floyd.
