Fatma

School has been really overwhelming lately, I’ve had so many assignments and tests to study for. Amidst my stress I watched the Karate Kid movies and Mr. Miyagi says that balance is an essential in life, so I figured I should stop panicking and take more breaks during my study sessions. It’s funny, once I started thinking like this, I felt like I was on track with my work and it reassured me. I panicked less and stopped letting my mental health deteriorate.

Last week, something happened to me in school that made me extremely angry. I was in Religious Education class and in the textbook for Christian beliefs there was a section in the chapter on suffering that mentioned the Charleston massacre.

I said to my friend who was sitting opposite me, “I really hate these stories, they make me really upset.”

“But there is nothing you can do about it,” she replied.

In my head I was thinking, Well, gun laws could be changed, we should recognize and change the way police treat people of colour in comparison to how they treat white people, and we could call the murderer who committed the massacre a terrorist rather than avoiding the label because he’s white. But I didn’t say anything because I felt slightly afraid at the thought of confronting her. Instead, I said, “Isn’t that the guy who was given Burger King?“ She cut me off immediately: “The police had to do that so that he would confess.” I sat in my chair thinking, So, you don’t recognize the difference between the treatment of white people and black people by the police? Don’t you realize that black people are murdered by the police, in front of their families, for simply putting their hands up?

It really upset me that she thought there was nothing we could’ve done to stop that racist murderer from killing multiple black people. There are, in fact, many things to be done. By the time I die, I hope that I make at least one privileged person realize that we can always do something, no matter how minor it may seem, to effect change. ♦