Dear Editor,

I wanted to write you this letter to talk about Black Lives Matter. I feel like most students don’t understand the meaning of the words Black Lives Matter.  Now I’m not saying that all students don’t understand what it means, but I feel we should do more to show more about it and do more events on it. We can have more assemblies when a major thing happens with the black community, so everyone can actually understand why what happened is such a big deal.  

One example that I have for the reason that I think we should do things like this is because nothing has changed since before. For example Trayvon Martin, when he was shot and killed,  the person who killed him,  George Zimmerman,  didn’t have to serve any jail time. He killed a teenager because he had a hood on and looked suspicious walking down the sidewalk. We did not get any justice for Trayvon Martin. Most students know about him just getting shot. 

Most students don’t know about the shooter not getting time. We could do things that talk about how we as a minority get treated rather than the majority. For example how we are the ones that get followed around the store when we go shopping. We are the ones who have to deal with people’s parents not wanting them hanging out with us or dating us because we are black. We are the ones that the cops follow around more than anyone else. We can show that nothing has changed no matter how hard we try. Since the time of Trayvon Martin’s killing to the time of George Flyod’s killing nothing has changed. The only difference is that Trayvon’s killer never went to jail, but George Floyd’s killer did. It still doesn’t matter because he still gets certain treatment. He has a cell to himself because of the fact that what he did would make people in the jail want to kill him. We also have to go through different things than the majority  does. George Floyd was killed because he tried to use a fake 20 dollar bill. There are white people out here shooting up schools and all that happened to them is they go to a mental hospital or jail time that’s it. No matter how much we try, nothing is going to change.

I’m not saying that other people’s lives don’t matter. I am saying that black lives are going through more than you will ever understand, and I think we should start learning more about it. 

Aniya Watson