Protesters marched to City Hall last Thursday to rally about the Black Lives Matter movement. | Thomas Dwyer/The Cougar
The topic of racial injustice and the sensitivity thereof have been an issue since the conception of our country. It has recently been placed at the forefront of media and the average American’s life due to the evident devaluing of minorities’ lives especially African-Americans.
Black Lives Matter is to show solidarity in a time where we are shown the opposite. There are videos showing blacks being publicly executed in the street for traffic stops. Unarmed Americans being murdered and justice not being served because the perpetrators were people who are supposed to be employees of truth and righteousness.
We seek to combat a system that cares little for black lives with its lack of indictment, sentencing and producing lackadaisical responses.
A student elected official at UH has asked that we forget this movement. We forget our lives matter — a notion held by those who don’t share our melanin.
The #removerohini movement is valid and necessary. I am an adamant believer in the First Amendment and, as a soldier in the Army, I have sworn my life to protect it. However, this does not remove consequences from the things one chooses to say in public avenues.
Her position of power is one based on representing her constituency, a task that many of us feel she has failed to do. How can she represent me when she believes I should forget that my life matters, as her Facebook post urged? #AllLivesMatter was created to demean the movement that values black lives.
All lives aren’t being murdered in the street at these rates. They don’t all face unjust incarceration rates or disproportionate sentences for crimes their peers do. All lives aren’t the ones being systemically proven to not matter. Black lives are. As are other minorities.
She should not continue being allowed to serve as a representative for a populace that believes she is wantonly negligent of the country’s current political state and the plights African-Americans face.
She should be held accountable if those she serves ask for it. It’s only American and the right course of action in a democratic setting such as this.
Koran Hackman is a petroleum engineering junior and all opinions are his own. To send a guest column of your own, please contact opinion@thedailycougar.com.
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“Guest Column: SGA VP is marginalizing the populace” was originally posted on The Daily Cougar