@marcellementor Watching George Floyd die on the video footage is horrendous; traumatic and brutal. Listening to George tell the police that he couldn’t breathe is a stark reminder of hearing Eric Gardner uttering the same words six years ago; and still, the police are not listening. Hearing him call for his mama with his last breaths tugged and tore at the hearts of (black) mothers worldwide. What is this injustice that still haunts Black and Brown bodies across the globe?
All of this is backdropped by a global pandemic – the Corona Virus – that is taking out chunks of people worldwide. We are on lockdown, shutdown; in isolation as a human race trying frantically to save ourselves, yet amid all of this – Black and Brown bodies are still persecuted and terrorized.
At George Floyd’s memorial -televised live on USA channels - The Reverend Al Sharpton, in his obituary makes a plea for law enforcement and governance to “take their knee off our collective necks”. What a request! In the year 2020, when in technicality there no longer exists a legalized segregated life in the USA. However, in a post-civil rights era, segregation is more insidious than ever. It is capitalistic, sexist, gendered, and classist in ways that continue to amaze and awe us. The structure of institutionalized racism and bigotry is alive and kicking the proverbial behinds of people who have historically been discriminated against for generations.
Again - all of this backdropped by the fight against the Corona Virus. My husband, who is an ICU nurse in a public hospital in Harlem, NYC, says the open ICU units at the hospital looked like someone had staged an apocalypse type movie but had only cast Black and Brown actors. He has been traumatized by the things he has seen here – a public hospital for people of color with little or no healthcare benefits, many of whom have pre-existing health conditions due to poverty and lack of access; who have once again come away having drawn the short straws.
“The disproportionate rates of [Covid-19] infection, hospitalization and deaths are linked to lingering and persistent health, social, economic and environmental inequities facing black Americans, conditions which are rooted in oppression, discrimination, medical apartheid, and structural racism … and which today have created a perfect storm,” said Peggy Shepard, co-founder of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, at a press conference this week. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/18/environmental-justice-means-racial-justice-say-activists
Dr. Cornel West reminds us that “Justice is what love looks like in public, just like tenderness is what love feels like in private.” Read that again and sit with it. Then ask yourself - Who deserves this love? Is it not true that ALL of us deserve this love and justice? If true, then the pursuit of justice is even more pressing now than ever before; amid the spike in cases in certain places of the world and despite us having a global death toll of over 500,000 from the Corona Virus to date; NOW is the time to push forward in our pursuit of justice and equity.
Our young people lead us here in the USA – the marches are organized by high school and college students galvanized into action. They are on the streets protesting; wearing masks, offering hydration, and care. They know that they have been handed a system of governance and institutionalized racism and inequity that they will not carry forward; and they know that their time to act is now. As adults we have to take our lead from them; they have to see us there with them, they have to be able to depend on our experience and the little wisdom we have.
The call and response at the protests in the USA are: “What do we want?” JUSTICE… “When do we want it?” … NOW. Yes, JUSTICE NOW.
We cannot be complicit and watch another death caught on video-cam and be ok with it. We cannot – our future quite literally depends on it. We have to take on fair governance and equity; we have to dismantle structures of power and institutionalized spaces of teaching and learning. We have to truly; TRULY, love each other so we manifest this love in a way so that we are able to reconstruct ourselves and the society we live in a fair and equitable for all. For us, and our children. Justice Now!
Dr. Marcelle Mentor is a South African native who completed her Ph.D. at Teachers College, Columbia University, and is currently a professor of Education at The College of New Rochelle. She is a former high school English Teacher having taught in her homeland for 15 years. She now considers herself a native New Yorker, having lived there for 13 years. Her academic interest focuses on Critical Race Theory, with an emphasis on Black Masculinity and Black men as classroom teachers. Her teaching philosophy is based on the concept of Ubuntu which is a Southern African ethic or humanistic philosophy which focuses on the fact that we are people through the existence and interaction with and from other people. She believes that we cannot be everything we are meant to be without the help of other people. She enjoys the collaborative potential of educational experiences where we are all learners and teachers, and she would always want to promote a sense of openness and acceptance of others within these environments. She is an activist, a mother of two teen aged sons; a scholar and teller of stories.
All of this is backdropped by a global pandemic – the Corona Virus – that is taking out chunks of people worldwide. We are on lockdown, shutdown; in isolation as a human race trying frantically to save ourselves, yet amid all of this – Black and Brown bodies are still persecuted and terrorized.
At George Floyd’s memorial -televised live on USA channels - The Reverend Al Sharpton, in his obituary makes a plea for law enforcement and governance to “take their knee off our collective necks”. What a request! In the year 2020, when in technicality there no longer exists a legalized segregated life in the USA. However, in a post-civil rights era, segregation is more insidious than ever. It is capitalistic, sexist, gendered, and classist in ways that continue to amaze and awe us. The structure of institutionalized racism and bigotry is alive and kicking the proverbial behinds of people who have historically been discriminated against for generations.
Again - all of this backdropped by the fight against the Corona Virus. My husband, who is an ICU nurse in a public hospital in Harlem, NYC, says the open ICU units at the hospital looked like someone had staged an apocalypse type movie but had only cast Black and Brown actors. He has been traumatized by the things he has seen here – a public hospital for people of color with little or no healthcare benefits, many of whom have pre-existing health conditions due to poverty and lack of access; who have once again come away having drawn the short straws.
“The disproportionate rates of [Covid-19] infection, hospitalization and deaths are linked to lingering and persistent health, social, economic and environmental inequities facing black Americans, conditions which are rooted in oppression, discrimination, medical apartheid, and structural racism … and which today have created a perfect storm,” said Peggy Shepard, co-founder of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, at a press conference this week. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/18/environmental-justice-means-racial-justice-say-activists
Dr. Cornel West reminds us that “Justice is what love looks like in public, just like tenderness is what love feels like in private.” Read that again and sit with it. Then ask yourself - Who deserves this love? Is it not true that ALL of us deserve this love and justice? If true, then the pursuit of justice is even more pressing now than ever before; amid the spike in cases in certain places of the world and despite us having a global death toll of over 500,000 from the Corona Virus to date; NOW is the time to push forward in our pursuit of justice and equity.
Our young people lead us here in the USA – the marches are organized by high school and college students galvanized into action. They are on the streets protesting; wearing masks, offering hydration, and care. They know that they have been handed a system of governance and institutionalized racism and inequity that they will not carry forward; and they know that their time to act is now. As adults we have to take our lead from them; they have to see us there with them, they have to be able to depend on our experience and the little wisdom we have.
The call and response at the protests in the USA are: “What do we want?” JUSTICE… “When do we want it?” … NOW. Yes, JUSTICE NOW.
We cannot be complicit and watch another death caught on video-cam and be ok with it. We cannot – our future quite literally depends on it. We have to take on fair governance and equity; we have to dismantle structures of power and institutionalized spaces of teaching and learning. We have to truly; TRULY, love each other so we manifest this love in a way so that we are able to reconstruct ourselves and the society we live in a fair and equitable for all. For us, and our children. Justice Now!
Dr. Marcelle Mentor is a South African native who completed her Ph.D. at Teachers College, Columbia University, and is currently a professor of Education at The College of New Rochelle. She is a former high school English Teacher having taught in her homeland for 15 years. She now considers herself a native New Yorker, having lived there for 13 years. Her academic interest focuses on Critical Race Theory, with an emphasis on Black Masculinity and Black men as classroom teachers. Her teaching philosophy is based on the concept of Ubuntu which is a Southern African ethic or humanistic philosophy which focuses on the fact that we are people through the existence and interaction with and from other people. She believes that we cannot be everything we are meant to be without the help of other people. She enjoys the collaborative potential of educational experiences where we are all learners and teachers, and she would always want to promote a sense of openness and acceptance of others within these environments. She is an activist, a mother of two teen aged sons; a scholar and teller of stories.