The Country that isn't free...

      Here in America we have a real issue on our hands. There is a problem with our society and the people that are supposed to protect us in this society. As an African American student in the United States I should not feel ashamed that I am black I should be proud of it and proud of where I come from. But not in this country, black people are still treated as second class citizens in many parts of this country. Police officers are killing innocent black people for no real reason at all and try to cover it up as “Protection” or “self defense”. I should not have to be scared of being shot and killed just because I am walking to the store in the afternoon. We need to change some things around in this country we are supposed to be making progress but instead we are going backwards as a country and it needs to stop.

      In our country it seems like people will do whatever it takes to keep us down. Twelve percent of our country is made up of African Americans. But thirty seven percent of the inmates in prison are african americans in the United States. Sixty Three percent of these inmates that are in prison can not read. These are very alarming stats and stats that need to be lowered. African Americans need to improve on these things we need to do better as a community and come up with solutions to these issues. Some people may come from broken homes and might not have the support system in there family so they have to resort to crime. Or maybe their parents never knew how to read or write so they could never learn how to do it themselves. Everyone has a different situation we as a country should try to be helping these type of citizens not making their situations even worse by killing them for no reason or locking them up in jail for years.

     This type of thing has been going on with African Americans for decades this is nothing new. From slavery all the way to the present day African Americans have had these issues. We were not allowed to read or write or even learn how to do it. Many people risked their lives just for a chance to learn and educate themselves. Today we still have a large portion of our community that can not read or write and people are not trying to help these people. In the fifties and sixties we had a civil rights movement for African Americans to get treated the same as white people. White police officers were killing innocent black people for the simple fact that they wanted freedom. Fifty years later and African Americans are still being killed for no reason by white police officers. Not all white police officers are bad people and kill innocent black people but the ones that do kill us for no reason they are spreading a bad reputation for the good cops out there and tarnishing the police’s name. We are losing trust in the people that are supposed to protect us and insure our safety.

     Even with all of these setbacks and major obstacles we still have to go through there are still African Americans that make it out to be successful. People like Barack Obama or Martin Luther King Jr have fought through everything that was in front of them and made achieved their goals. No matter how bad the situation is or how hard you think your life is remember that people were in the same situation as you and they never gave up so neither should you. If you work hard enough you can accomplish whatever you want to. Just because you’re black that does not mean you have to be another statistic. We are better than that as a community but people just see as numbers or mistakes waiting to happen but we can show them we are more than that. These are just my thoughts on how our country currently is right now and how we can improve on it and make it a better place.