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My dad was watching the news tonight like he always does and they were showing footage from a protest in our area around a police precinct because of the death of George Floyd. The protest started out peaceful, people were marching through the streets shouting his name and carrying signs, no one was hurting anyone or destroying anything. But then two hours into it a black kid ran up to a police car and smashed the back window with his skateboard before running back into the crowd. My dad had been silent the entire time the news was covering the protest until this moment. But the moment this kid smashed his skateboard into the window he got super angry and shouted “they should’ve shot him!”

I’m telling you I have never been more disgusted to hear something come out of his mouth than in that moment. I’m a closeted bisexual and he’s an extremely conservative homophobic catholic, so I’ve heard some fucked up shit from him. But this made me so disgusted and ashamaed to be his daughter. This man was so filled with anger at a teenage boy who was rilled up from the protest and rightfully upset about the man who was just brutally murdered by 4 white cops and made a rash decision to smash a window, not even hurting anyone, that he would actually say that the kid deserved to die. That’s the whole reason the protest was happening in the first place, because a black man was killed for a insignificant crime. Maybe instead of being angry at the kid who smashed his skateboard into a car window because he was rightfully upset about everything going on right now, he should turn his anger towards the white police officers who murdered this innocent black man for no reason except hatred and straight up racism. Maybe he should direct his anger towards all the police officers who’ve shot and killed innocent black people just going about their daily lives, going for a run, going to church, holding a cellphone, just because of the color of their skin. Maybe he should be angry about the actual fucking problem instead of adding to the problem.

This whole day and the past week or so it’s been really weighing on me just how massive of a problem this is. The fact that I hadn’t realized it until it started blowing up on the media, or at least not realized how often it happens. I’m disappointed in myself for not doing more. I’ve been feeling hopeless. Hopeless for the future, for this generation, for the next generation, for our country. It’s become very clear to me that change isn’t as easy to make as I thought. We can protest and riot and sign petitions and post on our social media all day long. But the truth of the matter is that these people can’t and won’t be changed. If I have to sit there and try to explain to someone why they should care about another human’s life and an innocent person’s murder, that in itself is proof that these people can’t be reached. That’s not something that should need to be explained. If they see this happening and aren’t automatically outraged, nothing anyone says to them, no way anyone explains the situation, no new perspective is going to change their minds. These people don’t even realize how racist they are and it’s disgusting. And it’s so discouraging. And tonight I realized that my dad is one of those people, and I can’t change him. And that was so heartbreaking. I realized that no matter how much I care and how hard I try to make him realize why he needs to care about this issue, it’s not going to change the fact that he’s racist. His first instinct tonight was to say that an innocent boy should’ve been shot just for smashing a window. If my dad was a police officer in that rally, how do I know he wouldn’t have actually pulled the trigger? That’s a horrifying thought. But it’s so disheartening to know that nothing I say will change that part of him. I don’t like to stay silent about anything I believe in, I’ve always been that way. If I’m passionate about something I’m gonna go out of my way to teach other people about it and spread awareness and make a difference. And that’s always made people upset, so I’m used to having friends and people I barely even know argue with me about things I believe in simply because I care about them. I’m used to people not hearing what I’m saying and refusing to open their eyes to the severity of a situation because it would make them uncomfortable to deal with. But this is just a whole new level. This is people’s lives we’re talking about now. I can take it when someone purposely throws their plastic wrapper in a trash can just to get a rise out of me but this is different. This isn’t just about getting a rise on me anymore, this is about standing up for innocent people’s lives. How can he sit here talking for hours about how abortion is horrible because the babies are just innocent lives being taken and how he respects the “sanctity of life” but then turn around and do nothing when innocent lives are being taken everyday just because of their race. He, being a white man living in this country, can afford to turn a blind eye to this and not be affected at all. But it’s time for white people to stop standing aside and staying quiet just because they can afford to, because black people don’t have that choice. They have to teach their kids how to not “act black” so they won’t make any white people uncomfortable and end up getting shot, they have to fear for their lives any time they set foot out of their houses because the world is so full of people who hate them just because of their race. It’s time for white people to stop using their privledge as a shield to protect them from having to face the reality of the world and start using it as a weapon to fight back against the wrong being committed against those who don’t have the platform or the privledge to defend themselves.

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