Greetings Everyone,
I hope you are all well today. I come to you with a very heavy heart. There are so many things that are going on in the world today. The police brutality of African-American (or Black) people, especially men are widespread. I want to extend my heart felt condolences and prayers to all of the families of victims in these circumstances. In my opinion, much of the killing at hand of police officers are unjustified, and they are usually unwarranted. I feel strongly about this, as my father could have met this same fate in 2003. My father had an incident where he was temporarily incarcerated. The officer in question felt threatened by my father. As a result, my sister and I were told at the hearing that he should have killed my father. I never forgot that. Please understand, I do not believe all police officers are bad. However, I personally have my own experiences with police officers.
There is a lot of controversy surrounding the protests of Black Lives Matter, even for LGBTQ rights and equality. Then there is the legislation debates to defund the Police. Most importantly, there are the political and racial debates. Let me be clear, I have friends, family and acquaintances who ate from all walks of life and people who are on all sides of the debates. I understand everyone’s position and I rarely chime in to keep the peace. I am on most social media platforms, where I see the daily discussions whether they are praises or criticisms of the various movements and initiatives. I do not engage in a lot of the discussions. I don’t mind debating, but I mind race bating. As someone with a Social Work background, I am trained in understanding and interacting with people of differing backgrounds. I made this point for one specific reason: one proposal in combatting police fatalities involving African-Americans is to use Social Workers. I personally believe this would be a step in the right direction for the training on de-escalation tactics and people competency training.
I view the world differently than most. I am probably more sensitive than most. I am extremely empathetic and I have a very rare personality type ISFJ-T, according to various Myers-Briggs Personality Tests. (If you are interested in learning more about your personality test, a good website for your take a personality test is http://www.16personalities.com). You might be wondering the relevance of this discussion. We are all different. We are al unique. We can all, as people of the human race, come together and change the world. The state of the world needs to improve collectively for everyone. I am one of those “think of the children” type of people. I pray for world peace often. I was born and raised in Baltimore, MD, where there is a lot of violence daily. There has been an average of 300 murders annually. Some people whom I have been acquainted with in one way or another were murdered over the years. In fact, in one year, two sixteen year old children in my case loads were killed. This brings me to the next point – Black on Black crime. This seems to be an issue that plagues the Black Lives Matter Movement or the fight against the police brutality. This needs to be changed too. My point is that all sources of race related killing need to be stopped. We will never get anywhere if we only focus on one aspect.
I am happy about the celebrities who are using the platform to speak against injustice of any kind. I appreciate all of the Caucasians (White) people who are aligned with and support the Black Lives Movement and justice and/or equal rights for all. More importantly, the discussions, solidarity and spotlight on these world issues are a good step in the right direction. Let us not forget about poverty and homelessness; drugs; domestic violence; treatment of Veterans (or lack of adequate services for them based on the sacrifices they made). There is a lot of work that needs to be done to change to current state of the world. It saddens me that the United States currently has a Commander in Chief, Donald Trump, who in my opinion spews hate and incites racism and other destructive behavior that contributes to some of the problems not only in the United States, but within the world. It is okay if people disagrees with me. This is my opinion based on my observation. Some of this behavior is comparative to Adolf Hitler and his treatment of the Jews. I will close by saying this – history is doomed to repeat itself if we don’t learn from past failures. This is something we need to think about.
Stay Blessed,
~Rayne Elise
Playlist for this topic: As a huge music lover, here are some of my favorite sons for this post.
– Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On”
– Marvin Gaye, “Inner City Blues”
– Marvin Gaye, “Mercy Mercy Me”
– Sam Cooke, “A Change is Gonna Come”
– Donny Hathaway, “Someday We’ll All Be Free”
– Donny Hathaway, “To Be Young, Gifted and Black”
– Michael Jackson, “Heal the World”
– Michael Jackson, “Man In The Mirror”
– Michael Jackson, “Scream”
– Michael Jackson, “They Don’t Really Care About Us”
– USA for Africa, “We Are The World”
– Eric Clapton, “Change the World”
– Cher, “Believe”
– 2Pac, “Only God Can Judge Me”
– 2Pac, “Changes”
– Bone Thugs n Harmony, “Change the World”
– Bone Thugs n Harmony, “If I Could Teach the World”
– Bone Thugs n Harmony, “Home”
– Mo Thugs, “This Ain’t Livin”
– Bizzy Bone, “Father”
– Mariah Carey, “There’s Got To Be A Way”
– Public Enemy, “Fight the Power”
Discovery Journey 