I am lucky to be able to forget about racism.

Not that I ignore it,

Or turn a blind eye,

But it is not always on my mind.

It doesn’t have to be.

I don’t have to think about it when I go to church,

Or take a walk in my neighborhood,

Or drive down the highway.

I go about my life without fear of being gunned down,

Simply for the color of my skin.

But there are days that I cannot forget it.

One such day was May 7, 2020,

When my social media was flooded with pictures,

Drawings,

Messages of anger and grief.

Months earlier, unbeknownst to me,

Ahmaud Arbery had been jogging in a neighborhood

When a father and son pursued him in their truck,

Shot,

And killed him.

Ahmaud was Black.

His murderers were white.

Their actions add another name to the list of innocent African Americans,

Murdered.

Their arrests did not occur until a video of his death went viral,

Three months after Ahmaud’s death,

One day before what would have been his twenty-sixth birthday.

It is tragic to me,

For so many reasons,

Not the least that a father and son perpetrated this crime,

That a man would raise his son to chase and shoot another man,

In the street,

In broad daylight,

Because his skin was a different color.

What,

Truly,

Makes these men different from one another?

They speak the same language,

Were raised in the same country,

Lived in the same town.

How could humanity go so terribly wrong?

There is an American history of inherited prejudice,

Like a genetic disorder but worse,

A lesson plan of hate and fear passed down through generations.

Laws are passed,

Protests organized.

Tears collect in a puddle that threatens to drown us.

But it persists,

A stain that can never be washed away,

America’s original sin.

Let us never forget Ahmaud,

Or George,

Or Breonna,

Or Trayvon,

Or Tamir,

Or Sandra,

Or the countless others.

Let us fight for justice to be served,

And use our privilege, if we have it,

To fight for a world in which we do not.