I grew up thinking that after the Civil Rights movement America was moving forward in hopes of more equality for all. However in the present day I still see the remnants of oppression, brutality, and inequality. Why do we need to have massive protests out of outrage for our voices to be heard? We live in a world where people still have to fight for basic rights. We have not improved and racism has not gone anywhere.
In the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in Philadelphia, the Frank Rizzo statue had been taken down. Frank Rizzo was the Mayor and police commissioner of Philadelphia during the mid nineteen seventies. He was a man known for being openly racist and oppressing black people with police brutality. While running for mayor he coined the term “vote white” (Chapel). So why would Philadelphia ever create a monument in honor of a racist and keep it up for thirty odd years?
As a nation we have told ourselves that we have improved and moved past the dark times of the Civil Rights movement. That we have improved upon our ways in dealing with equality, acceptance, and treating people as we want to be treated. But the simple answer is we haven’t.
The Frank Rizzo statue symbolized the ongoing presence of racism. Left up for thirty years as people voiced their opinions to take it down. However nothing was done until the outbreak of the Black Lives Matter movement. Only then, when thousands of angry protestors are at the front gates of the police barrier screaming to take down the statue, only then its been removed.
Racism has adapted and morphed over the years. As a nation we thought we had moved forward but it has only changed into something that lives with us in our everyday lives. That is why we see killings from police brutality and unfair treatment in the present day. As the Frank Rizzo statue was standing for thirty years it represented the hate and violence of racism living around us. Only when people protestested and trashed the statue did congressmen start to hear and understand things need to change. This needs to be fixed. We cannot only allow mass protesting to offer us change when change needs to be done right now.
We are living in a world where laws and regulations support the murdering of innocent black lives. We have conformed to new ways of systemic racism that we believe are okay. We shouldn’t have killings, protests, and riots for action to occur. A statue should not be up if its praising a white supremacist and only taken down killings, protests, and riots.
Work Cited
Chapel, Bill. “Frank Rizzo Statue Is Removed In Philadelphia: ‘It Is Finally Gone,’ Mayor
Says.” NPR.Org, 3 June 2020, www.npr.org/2020/06/03/868848550/frank-rizzo-statue-is-removed-in-philadelphia-it-is-finally-gone-mayor-says.
I love your speech, it flows very nicely and you did a great job at explaining the situation and the problems that arise with it. I think you might need to expand on the ‘response’ part of the problem. How should things change? What can we do as the public to help promote change? Explaining specific things that should change instead of having a broad “we should do better” statement.