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After the last few days and seeing a lot of "there's better ways" and "George Floyd wouldn't want this" I feel in my position as history student and future teacher I can help here. So here's a rundown of how blacks have historically been treated in this country, black criminality
and being black have always been viewed as a crime in the United States. Beginning with slavery, there were obviously punishments for being black and I wont spend time describing slavery, widely recognized as the greatest human tragedy. Following slavery is the period of
Jim Crow. Post Civil War life hardly changed for many blacks, slave labor was outlawed and it was replaced by the phrase "or as punishment for a crime" so for blacks this meant getting arrested and sent to jail and perform labor, this could be anything from walking on the wrong
side of the street, waving to the wrong neighbor, or tipping your hat to the wrong mistress. Constantly seen as criminals. Around this time we also go through segregation, where it was a crime to ride the wrong bus, or eat at the wrong restaurant. Again, its a crime to be a human
All of this revolving around skin color. The US used a system that allowed for legal racist actions and mistreatment. Simultaneously lynching is wide spread through the US and particularly the south. This was the legal and often promoted killing of young black men to strike fear
Into the local population. A black man couldn't walk down the street without fear of being arrested, or killed because the color of skin. Following a long Civil rights movement the next phase to single out black Americans was the war on crime and drugs. Crack cocaine and cocaine
Are exactly the same. One you smoke the other you snort, but the legal system found a way to make blacks criminals by targeting Crack cocaine and enforcing stricter punishment on lesser crimes. Often seen as a "success" this put huge misproportions of blacks in jail and the
period of mass incarceration was next in how could the US use legal systems to incriminate and dehumanize blacks. We even see this today, Google 4 teenagers and then Google 4 black teenagers. Trump showed this in his tweets on the protests to open up states again. When blacks
began to protest he used the word "thugs" and this does exactly what the US has been developing for centuries, language and actions that normalize the criminalization of people based on skin color. Throughout history words like "animal, cannibal, beast, wild, thugs" and many more
have been the adjectives to describe black people. It's a country's entire history of mistreatment for a group of people behind these riots. Educate yourself on the why to understand the what. Black is not a crime #BlackLivesMatter 
