B L A C K L I V E S M A T T E R !

Racism has existed since humans been around, there’s not an exact date that is set of when racism began. African Americans have always been known as the race that is treated differently from others. Blacks were slaves, maids, babysitters, cheuffers, and so on. We went through this whole “stage” of racism, well at least that’s what we thought. Although now that now racism ha sort of changed there are still people with a racist and bias mindset. In the past few years a big topic which has been brought to everyone’s attention is police brutality when it comes to innocent african americans losing their lives.

Statistics show that in the year of 2017 1,147 people were killed and or shot by a police officer. 282 out of the 1,147 that were killed were african americans. Half of the population of 282 african americans that were killed actually happened to be teenagers. Students from Forsyth state that they believe that the police officers attacking african american teenagers is something that needs awareness as well as something that needs to be put to an end.

I interviewed a few students to get their opinions on how they feel about the situation and their remarks are..

Kenya: How do you feel about police officers targeting african americans? But mainly african american teenagers?

Darina: I feel like it’s wrong that they are killing african americans but even more for the teens because most teenagers do not know their rights. I honestly think it’s sad because teenagers don’t really care to learn their rights either. Police officers are out here killing us like it’s nothing, and it’s mainly because they know we are not educated when it comes to our rights. I think if teenagers actually learned about our rights the police wouldn’t be able to ridicule us in any shape or form.

Sasha: I think police officers attack black teenagers the most. It’s something that I’m actually not surprised about, because police officers characterize african american teenagers to be criminal, weed smokers and gang affiliated. It’s a characteristic that is normally placed on a lot of african americans but it’s coming to the point where they’re attacking innocent teenagers who don’t live by that certain criteria.

Judah: I feel they need to stop it, they just want to have someone to bully and the teenagers are the main target to attack because they know that we don’t know any better. It’s like this because police have a lowkey racist mindset. They really want to play the all lives matter card, but they actually believe that the black population should decrease.

With the statements that I received I believe that teenagers here at Forsyth have a strong passion and are going to begin to make a change. Each and every single one of them have a voice and they would like to be heard. We can all want a change but it needs to start with teamwork to see a change.