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[whyblacklivesmatter]

Alwyn Thomas

I grew up in and went to school in Chester which is a predominantly White area, their representation of Black people and culture was extremely limited. My skin tone is as light as anything but I was one of the darkest people in the school, I didn’t really experience racism as such in my younger years but near the end of Primary/Year 7 it was where I noticed it more.

You meet a lot of new people going into High School and they would always say “where are you from?” and they would keep on asking you until they got the answer they wanted to hear. When they found out that my Mother was Black Jamaican all those little stereotypes come into play, constantly referencing ‘Cool Runnings’ as an example. Initially it’s harmless, it’s just conversation and getting to know you banter but then after that it’s when the more damaging stereotypes come into play. The White kids expect you to act in a certain, expect you to smoke Weed, get involved in Crime, etc and over the years it got worse and worse and I felt like I was the only representation of Blackness; I had this massive pressure on my shoulders like I was going to let the side down and I needed to step up. Being young you don’t realise it should just be yourself making these decisions and you think you have to conform to these stereotypes and because of this I got myself into a lot of trouble not just in schooling but with the Police as well.

On top of this I had to deal with friends that were openly racist to me and my options were either put up with the racism or have no mates. I wanted to have friends and I wanted to be popular, It was a really rough time for me and it wasn’t until I was 21 that I kind of realised that this behaviour and living my life like this was no good and I sat myself down and analysed why I was behaving the way I was. My family on both my Mum and Dad sides are good people, never in trouble and hardworking and I came to a type of conclusion that it was the stereotypes made me feel that I had to conform to a certain way of life.

When answering the question of Why Black Lives Matter I’ll use an analogy; You’re walking along the street and you see a rich businessman, he has a fancy suit and a nice watch, he’s standing next to a homeless guy with not a penny to his name. You’ve got some spare change in your pocket, who would you give it to? I would always give the homeless guy my change and never the businessman purely for the fact that he needs my help more than the person who obviously doesn’t need it.

I don't think people appreciate the gravity and the size of the gap between Black and White people in society. It's so deep-rooted that it's infiltrated our social constructs to the point where even when we're trying to make something of our lives there's so many barriers socially and physically in our way. That it's such a struggle people think that we have equal opportunities but it's not the case, it's so much deeper than that. I think if we can destroy the stereotypes people have about Black people we can begin to uplift each other. It’s tiring having to deal with all this, we deserve our place as equals in this world.

[whyblacklivesmatter]

Junior Dayvis

“I didn't grow up in England, I grew up in the West Indies. I was born here, and I came back here when I was 18 in the '80s and I wasn't here long until I experienced my first instance of racism, which was in Speke. When I was going to work, a van load of White lads drove past and were shouting the 'N word' at me. I panicked. For the duration I remained at that job, I started to carry a knife. I have no idea what I would have done with it, I certainly wouldn't have used it, but I felt I had to do something. It got to a point where I was that nervous going into work, walking along the dark roads of a morning, that I ended up packing the job in a few months later.

“Growing up as a kid in Trinidad and Tobago I never heard the words 'N*gger' or C*on' so it came as a shock to me coming back to England to hear people say those things. However, it was the institutional racism that I experienced at the hands of the police which was the thing that caused me the most issues.

“With the Stephen Lawrence enquiry and its findings of ‘Stop and Search’ proving that the police were institutionally racist in their use of it, I found myself on the receiving end of it on many occasions. For the record; I haven't got a criminal record nor been in any trouble with the police, however there was a prolonged period throughout the '90s that I was stopped countless times, but the one time in particular that sticks in my mind is when I was driving down the M62 on my way to work. There was a police van parked just before the Widnes exit and as I went past it pulled out suddenly and I remember thinking ‘he's driving a bit fast; I wonder who he's chasing?’ The penny dropped that he was chasing me! I pull over and wind my window down to the approaching policeman, saying ‘what seems to be the issue?’ ‘Your tax disc isn't on display’ He says. It was, it was in plain sight – he used such a pathetic excuse as a reason to stop me.

“Another incident with the police was when I was driving home from the Chippy and I was pulled over. I asked him this time ‘why am I being pulled over?’ The policeman got into my face and started screaming at me ‘you know, and I know what you think I've pulled you over for’ – I just said ‘I just want to know.’ I went on to say ‘I tell you what, you tell me what you're looking for and I'll let you know if I've got it.’ He wasn't happy.

“I was stopped in Widnes by the police when I was a passenger in a vehicle, the driver and friend of mine was White. The policeman and my friend knew each other, and he said ‘is this your mate?’ My friend was like ‘Yeah’. ‘It's alright, off you go’ and nothing more was said. In summary, where I live (Runcorn) I've never had a problem with the everyday person on the street, however I've had countless issues with the police, always it's been the police. I'm a good person, and I don't want to be conscious of who I am and be a continuous target, however that is how they made me feel during that period of my life.

“Someone said 'All lives matter' I was like, I know all lives matter, I'm not saying your lives don't matter, there's no argument there but there is a specific reason why the Black Lives Matter movement has started and that is due to all the things that have happened to Black people over the years. If you can't understand that concept, then it can't be explained any clearer than that. The Black Lives Matter movement has arisen, not just because of what happened in Ferguson, or the murder of George Floyd – it has come from however many centuries of oppression Black people have been subject to.”

[whyblacklivesmatter]

From when I was little me and my brother would go to a child-minder in Dovecot during the school Summer holidays, we would play in the front garden of her house and most days a procession of kids would walk past shouting the 'N Word' and pick fights with us. As I was the eldest it would be a common occurrence for me to be fighting with boys as well as girls and it got to a point that the way we would deal with it would be by not going the local shops, play in the back garden instead or not play outside at all. Now some people would say that it's just 'kids being kids' but it isn't and didn't feel that way when you'd get abuse every day of the Summer holidays.

Nine years ago, I was on my way to my aunty's retirement part in Southport; my mum is from there as is most of my family and I've never seen Southport as being a hotbed of racism. We (myself my aunty, mum and son) were in the car park behind the venue where the party was being held on Lord Street and I noticed a man and woman by us, suddenly the man 'snotted' on my aunty and my mum said "Oh my God, I can't believe you've just done that" to which their reply was a barrage of racist abuse, amongst which he called my mum an "old, black c*nt." At this point I was furious and they continued to call us every racist name under the sun, they threatened us with violence, thankfully it never escalated to physical blows but I remember my son, who was 8 years old at the time and never experiencing racism at this open and raw level, being terrified. It was at this point we walked away and went into the party.

After a stiff drink I spoke to my aunt and uncle and I was going to let it go because at the time I just saw the situation as avoiding a fight but my aunt was having none of it and said "it's racist abuse, you need to report this." So, the next day I made a statement and completed an E -Fit description with Merseyside Police and lo and behold, they managed to catch them and eventually it ended up in court. He got 13 weeks in prison whilst she had to undertake community service however, she was the more aggressive of the two funnily enough, the mitigation for her actions on that night was that she had a drink problem and had been in and out of foster care all her life. We were given compensation as well, not that much, £100 give or take and my mum still has that money, she refuses to spend it out of principle.

Looking back at that time in my life there were many things that I remember but the thing that upsets me is the fear in my son's eyes and him saying to me "I hate this country." For my son to feel that he doesn't belong in this country when he's born here, got to me the most.

Black lives matter is all about equality, black people don't want less yet we're not asking for more we all need to be on the same road, we need to have the same path. We hurt the same, we bleed the same, we want the same things for our families. Black people just want to be on the same starting block as everybody else.

Rachel Agorom-Lloyd

[whyblacklivesmatter]

“I haven't really been affected by racism to the degree some people have, due to my background and skin colour. I'm more golden than brown, as my father was Mixed-Race and my mother is White. I never really got called N*gger or any of the horrible words to describe people of colour, but because I'm a Mixed-Race, Transgender woman who lives in the city centre of Liverpool, that came with an entirely different set of issues for me.

“My mother is from the North End of Liverpool. When she began dating my father, he would receive a bit of abuse, but because he could hold his own, he used to do boxing, he was relatively left alone. However, due to the hostile environment of the North End in the '60s and '70s, my mum would spend most of her time in the South End with my dad. She would be called a 'Dirty Woman' and 'N*gger Lover'. Back in her day you were seen as being the lowest of the low if you dated outside of your race.

“The racism my family received goes even further back than my parents. My father was born to a White mother and a Black father in 1917. There were issues of racism in my era but nothing like what my grandparents received for daring to date outside of their race, in a time of extremely conservative attitudes, not only about who you should be with but for also being a White woman at that time.

“I found from my personal experiences that my life as a Transgender woman and passing as female was more of an issue than the racism I've received in my life. I lived in an era of the skinhead culture where there were instances of racism here and there but, again, because I 'passed' for being White and as female, on top of where I lived in the South End, it limited the abuse I received. I've worked in clubland for years and although I haven't got a violent bone in my body, I have to deal with drunks, people who are high on all kinds of drugs and just the general public. I've got a very quick and scathing mouth that deflates most situations before they even begin; I've learned to cope and adapt to whatever life throws at me.

“The question 'Why Black Lives Matter' is a confusing one because my immediate instinct is to say that 'they do'... they do. We're all human beings; it's not about what colour you are, it's about what kind of energy you want to give off into the world. This question 'Why Black Lives Matter' shouldn't even be getting asked, it should be normal that we are all here together as the human race.

“I'm shocked. I still get shocked and I can't believe that racism and all forms of bigotry are still an issue in today's society, but then again it makes me realise that it's still there. It's got to go; it has got to go. I pray to God or whoever, to the energy of the Universe that it stops. Please make it stop.”

Tracy Wilder

[whyblacklivesmatter]

My family arrived in the UK around 2000 when I was 8 with my mother having indefinite leave to remain. My grandfathers on my father's and mother's side fought in the Second World War giving so much to the Allied cause over that period of time, and it was in 2011 that I found myself a resident of the UK applying for a Visa to remain in a country that I now called home.

“This period of time was made extremely difficult and to make matters worse, the information wasn't made freely available, I felt that the system was stacked against me. I had significant and solid roots in the UK, going to primary and high school, getting my National Insurance card through the post when I was 16, having an established base of friends and people I had grown up with over the years – and here I was, an asylum seeker, when I identified so strongly with being British.

“I don't understand why people from countries such as the US and Australia freely move in and out of the UK, whilst if you are from an African country the hoops you have to jump through are made infinitely more difficult. I faced the real prospect of being an openly gay man being sent back to a country with a horrifying record of homophobic attacks and murders.

“My father is White and he was openly racist in the household. For the longest of times I never addressed this – in society people generally have a habit of never calling a thing a thing. I would just dress his behaviour up as him being 'crazy.' He would make comments about my mum and make me feel conscious about my appearance and African heritage. I normalised these things for the longest of times because I think we assume racism is this thing that is intentional or direct to cause harm however racism appears in so many shades and so many colours, invariably all forms are as bad as each other. This shaped my younger years in how I perceived myself and how I looked at the world.

“I think about why my father would marry a Black woman and the simple answer, for me, is that there is a certain level of racial fetishism. A White man will be attracted to a Black woman on a superficial level however there would be a significant level of cognitive dissonance on his part when saying the words he did. He was willing to have her as his wife yet unwilling to take on the responsibility and issues Black people face in their everyday lives.

“Black Lives Matter is a minimum requirement. It's about time that Black people finally took their seat at the table. It's about reaching for the sky – being Black is not just about racism and racist discourse. It's about going beyond that and being the best a Black person can be in a system that is so heavily stacked against them.”

Franklin Dawson

[whyblacklivesmatter]

“I was brought up in a predominantly White village near Southport, by a White family that had adopted me. They're still my mum and dad today, and I love them, but they never taught me anything about my background or what it was to be a Black person living in the UK. It wasn't out of malice or anything of the kind, they just weren't aware that it was an issue of importance at the time.

“When I was 14, I remember having an argument with one of the hard-knocks in the area, who was 19 – it turned physical and I ended up kicking his arse. Later that day I was at home with a couple of friends, my parents were out at the time, and the lad I'd beaten turned up at my home with about 10 of his mates, broke in and beat me and my friends so severely I was hospitalised for a week. The police took a statement but nothing else was ever pursued. I was a minor and adults had assaulted a child. I was let down by the institutions that were supposed to protect me.

“There were also times in later life where I've had people say things to me or in my presence. I was having a conversation with a former girlfriend about racism. It was a beautiful end to the day; the sun was setting as we looked out into the picturesque mountainous valleys of North Wales from the beer garden at a local pub. I was explaining that times hadn't changed that much, whereas she said things had gotten much better. It was as if it had been scripted for that moment, when one of the regulars wandered over to where we were seated, whilst looking out to the sunset and says "f*cking hell, you haven't half caught the sun."

“Whenever I get asked about racism, or an example of when I've been at the brunt of racist behaviour, I find it very difficult to think of a specific incident as it's been a continuum of racism from a young age with far too many stories to tell – for me, Why Black Lives Matter shouldn't even be a subject. Why Black Lives Matter states the obvious in itself and it's like asking why does humanity matter? It matters because every philosophy we live by, all the love and compassion we give, should be divided into equal measures to all people, regardless of who they are and what their background is.”

Billy Vitch

[whyblacklivesmatter]

“My grandfather, Rashid Mufti, was the first Race Relations Officer in the entirety of the UK after the Toxteth riots. His family had came to the UK from Pakistan when he was 2 months old and managed to build a good life here and I am extremely proud of this fact. I've always lived in a mixed family background so, for me, I've been somewhat privileged in the fact of how I've been treated in general. From the odd snide remark or tone-deaf comment from the White side of my family, like when my mum told me the story of when she first brought my dad home to meet her family and they were like 'whaaat?' with shocked looks on their faces. And another time one of my White cousins said to me 'you're lucky that you're not as dark as your dad.' I was confused by this because I just assumed that everyone had family from mixed different backgrounds.

“For me, it’s always been a case of me being 'White passing' because of the colour of my skin, as I'm somewhat light skinned from having a father from a Pakistani background and a mother who is White, but I have still seen the effects that racism has on members of my family. The one that always sticks out in my mind from when I was younger, was I was out with my dad, who is Pakistani, and an older, middle aged, White woman nonchalantly walked up to me and said "Do you know this P*ki?" This was around the time that the media frenzy and xenophobia over Northern England grooming gangs was at its height and here we were, literally right by my house – my father experiencing racism from some random person in the street. She obviously thought this Pakistani man was grooming or abducting this helpless little child.

“Why Black Lives Matter should never really have to be a question in the first place. We shouldn't have to say 'Why Black Lives Matter' it should just be a given that Black lives matter just as much as other people's lives matter. I can't get my head around the fact that we've created a society that discriminates around the colour of a person's skin colour – it's not even just a societal issue, it's an institutional one.

“I'm a Trans activist and Black Trans women specifically are one of the most marginalised groups in the world. There is barely any attention brought to the sickeningly high murder rates of Black Trans women, or the levels of homelessness within the Black Trans community. This is happening in 2020. We can't say that Black Live Matter when we're not empowering these communities within the Black community also.”

Felix Mufti-Wright

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Chantelle “As parents of mixed-race children I find that we have to navigate certain situations in a certain way. If our eldest has ever experienced racism at school, I can see Paul going to that angry place in his head and I step in. This is not because he wouldn't know how to deal with it, but rather that I have had more experience with these scenarios and learned how to navigate them to a satisfactory conclusion. However, I am still often met with indifference, anger and racism.”

Paul “What I've noticed about schools in particular is that they make loud noises about teaching Black History Month but after that, what? You can teach Black history, but what are the schools doing about the everyday impact and damage racism causes?”

Chantelle “We as a family have to educate our children in Black identity because the schools and society in general certainly aren't doing it. We have to get them away from the stereotypes of starving children in Africa by showing them positive role models in Black history and our community.”

Chantelle & Paul Lunt

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I haven't experienced direct racism my experiences have always been indirectly where people I've been with have experienced racism or people have been racist in my presence.

I'm from Bootle it's a predominantly white area and can be very racist however the one instance of racism that sticks in my mind is when I worked in Liverpool city centre in a bar with one of my close friends who was black. The bar was closing and my friend was asking people to leave, he wasn't being nasty or aggressive, he was just doing his job. There was a lad, with his girlfriend, playing on a fruit machine and my friend went over and asked when he'd finished on his game if he could leave. The man was like "no problem mate" but as soon as my friend had walked away his face twisted in anger and he said "Fucking N***er."

There was no other black people about and to her credit, the girlfriend called him out on it and left him standing in the bar. There were no other people in the bar that were black and I was just stood there, stunned. I just couldn't understand how someone could be polite to someone's face one minute then turn around and say stuff like that.

From when I was younger I was always told to teach people with dignity and respect but when I grew up and moved into employment it became 'yeah, let's treat people with dignity and respect but not those people' basically people who aren't white. I quickly came to the realisation that things aren't equal. Society is not equal until it's equal, people need to stand up, be counted and say this, understand that this is the case and then change the status quo. We won't be able to move on as a species until we can do this.

Paul

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“I moved here (Liverpool) when I was 8, I'm originally from Kenya. My dad had a good job in Liverpool. I lived in Wavertree, along Lawrence Road, and this experience always sticks to me whenever I think about racism. When I was at school and I used to eat food that wasn’t Halal, the dinner ladies used to frown at me. I shouldn't be getting told at the age of 8 that I shouldn't eat certain foods because they’re not Halal. They couldn't imagine a black person being Christian. This was also coming from the likes of teachers; this was not coming from children. This was a big turning point for me, coming from Kenya. I never understood racism at that point; my mum didn't have the heart to tell me that people would be different or mock you for your skin colour. I come from Africa and everyone is of the same skin colour, so in that sense we are equals, but here (Liverpool) it's different. “It got to a point where it became quite intense and I didn't know what to do any more. I think after some time one of the teachers said to me ‘why are you eating this, aren't you Muslim? Are you a Christian?’ I was like ‘Yeah! I'm Christian, I promise I'm Christian, I go to church’. The Teacher was baffled, saying ‘this doesn't make sense’ – I explained that she could speak to my parents. They even placed my two sisters into Arabic classes at this point. “There was a lot of racism at the time. Even in the playground, the white kids would say about my skin, ‘Euww! that's the colour of poo, you need to be flushed down the toilet’. We were taught something completely different in Kenya and coming to Liverpool was some of my first experiences with racism. “Black Lives Matter is not a trend. Black Lives Matter because we're singled out as a race, even from other ethnic backgrounds. It seems that they like our culture, but they don't like us.” Serena Muhanji, 22 #blacklivesmatter #portraitphotography #editorialphotography #liverpool #sigmartlens50mm #story #racism #nikonphotographer

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“The places that I've worked throughout my life, I've generally been the only Black person that has worked there and even in a place like Liverpool which is somewhat cosmopolitan, you don't see many Black people in customer facing positions within the city. It's so frustrating and in the places I've worked there are so many microaggressions from White colleagues that they seem just to get away with casual racism and it feels like most of the time as a Black person working in these places you just have to swallow it. Heaven forbid if you get angry or emotional about something going on or you will be labelled as aggressive. You do not want to be labelled as that angry Black man. “In a music venue I worked in, there was a person that boasted about how he Blacked up for a party as Prince and because he was merely paying homage to his idol, it wasn’t offensive. This was said in front of my manager, to which he remained silent to the point of being apathetic to the whole conversation. I was so utterly frustrated by the whole situation that I posted about it on my Twitter account. Numerous people came forward and said to me ‘we've heard about his behaviour and all the stuff he used to get up to years ago’. I just don't get why they didn't say anything? There were so many other stories that got posted online, after mine, about this particular person’s conduct towards women and other inappropriate behaviour. The people he worked with and the venues he had dealings with must've known this – they just turned a blind eye. The reason being, in my opinion, he had influence and he brought in money for them. (1/2) #blacklivesmatter #whyblacklivesmatter #racism #editorialphotography #nikon #sigma50mmart #liverpool #blackphotographers #portraitphotography

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1/2 “I have had different experiences of racism, from the overt with name calling in the 90s, and the covert racism when I joined the police. These were all at various levels of nuance and the things that fall in between, the different treatment of you or the way they speak to you, to the assumption that you're quite aggressive because you're Black. “After I left the police I set up my own business and at this point in my life I was very aware of racist attitudes and assumptions of who I was because of my skin colour and they were very rarely positive – an example being that you are less motivated or educated, despite what you do to challenge that idea. With this in mind it made me very nervous when starting up. I eventually plucked up the courage and sent off my pitches and ideas to companies, to the point where I had a very promising opportunity with a large corporate client. “I had a really good rapport via email over a period of 6 to 8 weeks, to the point where it was just a case of signing on the dotted line. They invited me into their establishment for a final face-to-face meet-up and it was when the woman I had been speaking to via email saw me. I instantly realised that there was an issue. It was her actual facial expression, it literally dropped with shock. For me, I had gone from building a really nice relationship online with this person to sitting across a desk from them with their little microaggressions – crossed arms, shutting my questions down with short, closed replies. She went above and beyond to try and put me off wanting to do business with their company. Needless to say, I never heard from them again. “I look back on this experience in 2019 compared to the overt racism I experienced growing up in the 90s and I understand racism hasn't gone away, but rather it has changed its face."

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[whyblacklivesmatter]

“I have had different experiences of racism, from the overt with name calling in the 90s, and the covert racism when I joined the police. These were all at various levels of nuance and the things that fall in between, the different treatment of you or the way they speak to you, to the assumption that you're quite aggressive because you're Black.

“After I left the police I set up my own business and at this point in my life I was very aware of racist attitudes and assumptions of who I was because of my skin colour and they were very rarely positive – an example being that you are less motivated or educated, despite what you do to challenge that idea. With this in mind it made me very nervous when starting up. I eventually plucked up the courage and sent off my pitches and ideas to companies, to the point where I had a very promising opportunity with a large corporate client.

“I had a really good rapport via email over a period of 6 to 8 weeks, to the point where it was just a case of signing on the dotted line. They invited me into their establishment for a final face-to-face meet-up and it was when the woman I had been speaking to via email saw me. I instantly realised that there was an issue. It was her actual facial expression, it literally dropped with shock. For me, I had gone from building a really nice relationship online with this person to sitting across a desk from them with their little microaggressions – crossed arms, shutting my questions down with short, closed replies. She went above and beyond to try and put me off wanting to do business with their company. Needless to say, I never heard from them again.

“I look back on this experience in 2019 compared to the overt racism I experienced growing up in the 90s and I understand racism hasn't gone away, but rather it has changed its face.

“In a western society it's quite apparent that Black lives don't matter. Look at the current situation with COVID-19, it was clear from the start of this terrible pandemic that a disproportionate of people from BAME backgrounds were dying because of this disease, yet there was no effort to shield people from these backgrounds. We're worthy to do jobs keeping the economy running and people safe but we're not worthy to protect. Black Lives Matter. We as Black people know this, but it's time the establishments and institutions that run the world understand this too.”

Chantelle

[whyblacklivesmatter]

“The places that I've worked throughout my life, I've generally been the only Black person that has worked there and even in a place like Liverpool which is somewhat cosmopolitan, you don't see many Black people in customer facing positions within the city. It's so frustrating and in the places I've worked there are so many microaggressions from White colleagues that they seem just to get away with casual racism and it feels like most of the time as a Black person working in these places you just have to swallow it. Heaven forbid if you get angry or emotional about something going on or you will be labelled as aggressive. You do not want to be labelled as that angry Black man. 

“In a music venue I worked in, there was a person that boasted about how he Blacked up for a party as Prince and because he was merely paying homage to his idol, it wasn’t offensive. This was said in front of my manager, to which he remained silent to the point of being apathetic to the whole conversation. I was so utterly frustrated by the whole situation that I posted about it on my Twitter account. Numerous people came forward and said to me ‘we've heard about his behaviour and all the stuff he used to get up to years ago’. I just don't get why they didn't say anything? There were so many other stories that got posted online, after mine, about this particular person’s conduct towards women and other inappropriate behaviour. The people he worked with and the venues he had dealings with must've known this ¬– they just turned a blind eye. The reason being, in my opinion, he had influence and he brought in money for them.

“I worked in a retail store with two other Black people during that time. I'm somewhat more alternative in the way I dress and style myself and there was a White guy who was deeply into Black urban culture and I used to get the sly racist comments from him saying that he was Blacker than me because he was into Hip Hop and styled himself in a more 'Urban' fashion. It's totally frustrating because I know I could be justified in kicking off and being angry but because I'm in a majority White working space, no one's going to have your back at the end of the day, this proved to be the case with the Blackface comments. If I bring it up or make it an issue, then I'm the aggressor in the whole situation.

“All the things that have been happening in Lockdown such as the BLM Protests and the George Floyd murder, it's so important that it's happening in the age of social media. People aren't working – they haven't got other outside factors to take their minds off the movements going on in society. They are able to educate themselves on these things, but if they choose to ignore them then it's purely down to the fact that they don't care. If you are not taking the time out to educate yourself then you do not believe that Black Lives Matter.

“Black Lives Matter because we are just as human as everybody else. As far back as Black people can remember and looking back on our history it has been one of oppression, torment and generational trauma that goes with being Black. If something does not change soon, this cycle will perpetuate itself with our future generations. It is a scary thought, that for everything we've brought to the world, the fact we're still having to fight just to have a normal life is crazy.”

Jamel Burke - 27