May 30, 2020 – the day when the world witnessed the launch of SpaceX Dragon into space with two US Astronauts; that same day US witnessed nation-wide rioting and protests.
While on one hand the country was shooting for the stars, on the other, the country’s stars were being shot at. As noted in so many of the posts and articles, the past week has clearly displayed the nation’s deepest cracks of racism in the system. We are all still grappling with the effects of the Covid19 pandemic when this even larger systemic pandemic of racism has hit us.
Today as I reflect on the time when I moved to the US from India way back in 2007, I had always visualized (and still do) America as being the world’s melting pot of cultures and ethnicity. To see how far people of color and race have made it here – in Business, IT, Medicine, Science, even Politics – despite the suppression, despite being broken down by the very systems they would want to uphold and despite such deep-rooted racist treatment in the white-dominated world, and still rising to the top! It isn’t easy and a huge applause to them!
Being a brown-skinned immigrant, there were times when I was faced with questions around my accent, my ‘knowledge’ of English, my religious practices. Clearly, there were implicit biases I have been faced with and it stays with you. At the same time, this adopted country has done us good – to my family and me – and I cannot help but feel privileged to be shielded by that belief. And with that same feeling, it is also impossible not to feel the pain of so many black Americans whose lives have been shattered right now through injustice and segregation.
Yesterday, I, with my family, participated in the peace protest with fellow community residents in this small town of Vienna, about 15 miles from the D.C. epicenter of the protest. People had gathered around, on their one knee, exercising their constitutional right to protest peacefully against this racial discrimination pandemic. Cars drove by, honking loud and clear in support of the crowds. Maintaining the six-feet distance with the crowd, we could see all kinds of signs being held high:
I. Can’t. Breathe
Racism. Is. The. Bigger. Virus
Prejudice. Is. An. Emotional. Commitment. To. Ignorance
“Mama” – last words by George Floyd was the most painful sound that no mother should ever reconcile with.
For the first time, I truly understood the deep meaning behind the phrase – Black.Lives.Matter.
As a parent, an educator and an advocate for social change, I do not know at this point what to make of all of this for now and what the right actions ought to be. We may have come a long way as a race, at the same time, I realize how far behind we as humans are in embracing the power of diversity and inclusion; that there is an urgency to unteach this level of exclusion and an even stronger need to promote giving that strengthens equity.
The talk at our home is about how fortunate we are – and lets do more than be comforted by it.