Racial Conflict

By: Joshlynn Murphy

Racial conflict started years ago, when African Americans were fighting among various ethnic groups in major cities. In today’s society, racial conflict comes from races who discriminate blacks and does brutal things to blacks. Others have their opinion on how they feel about the racial conflict in our society.

“It has been the one thing keeping us from truly enjoying the wonders of this world and each other,” said senior Matthew Wilbourn.

Recently, a former football player, Colin Kaepernick, went through some racial conflict experiences. He felt as if it wasn’t right for African Americans to get treated the way they did. The media felt as if it was disrespectful, to the nation, for him not to recite the national anthem during important games. In this case, others don’t see anything wrong with it.

“No, I don’t think it was wrong. The question is, has America showed him any respect? How can he show respect to America, if America hasn’t showed him any respect? We don’t praise him because he’s black, we only praise him because he plays football,” said Mr. Bernthal, the leader of the Black Student Union.

Since there has been a lot of African Americans being killed due to racial conflict and police brutality, people around America started a movement called “Black Lives Matter”. Some believe it didn’t cause any problems, while others think different.

“Yes, only because they’re just angry and not providing any solutions except “leave us alone”. This is counter productive to any “positive movement”. They’re trying to mirror the violent side of the Black Panther Party, but it’s a half baked idea,” said Wilbourn.

On the other hand, others think different about the movement.

“The problem was there in the first place. “Black Lives Matter” isn’t causing more problems, if there are problems that come forth within a protest movement, as long the protest is legitimate and they are protesting real problems. They are protesting real problems and if they would want to stop the movement, just solve the problem,” said Bernthal.

Others have their opinion on what to do to solve this problem in our society. Some think that the “White Americans” need to actually sit back and think hard about what African Americans have been through and how they can help out by giving their time, space and opportunity to other races.

“Speaking as a White American, my eyes have open to what the real meaning of what “White Privilege” really means and how this has affected, not only the African Americans, but Latinos, Asians and etc,” said Bernthal.

Even these colors such as White and Black have their own meaning and symbolism. White standing as bright, innocence, while Black normally stands for negativity, gloomy, and evil.

“White Americans need to take stock of the privilege that they inherited, not earn and then compare of all the things they have in life and to what extent are these things really, truly earned or are they a function of the privilege they got by the married they family they were born in?,” said Bernthal.

Hopefully, we come together as one and be able to solve this racial conflict.