In 1853, Unitarian minister and abolitionist Theodore Parker said that he did not understand the arc of the moral universe, and though it was long, he was sure that it was bending toward justice. In a speech in Montgomery, Ala., 112 years later, Rev. Martin Luther King, when asked about how long it would take to see social justice, responded that it would not take long because the arc of the moral universe was bending toward justice.
It has been almost 50 years since then, and with everything that has happened over the past four months — from the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner to the grand jury decisions not to indict the officers who killed them — it feels as if the arc is still bending and justice is taking a long time to get here. Protests (both violent and peaceful) have erupted in major cities across the country, including Baltimore. It is a racially diverse movement that is uniting people in ways that have not been seen since the civil rights movement.
I have spent the semester teaching about Ferguson in my classroom. My students wanted to know what they could do to be a part of the change that they believed was happening around the country. I told them they should focus on changing themselves and their communities. I had them spend some time examining and confronting their own racial biases. I taught them about the social construction of race and class and assigned follow-up readings to help guide our discussions. I taught them how to facilitate difficult and emotional (but necessary) conversations about race and class. I told them that years from now, they will not remember the tests that I gave them or the parties they attended, but they will remember that this was a time when they actively grabbed the reins of democracy and worked to bend the arc closer to justice.
The ongoing protests, in so many ways, are no longer about the incidents that happened in Ferguson or in Staten Island, N.Y. They speak to larger issues around the ongoing treatment and criminalization of unarmed black males and females and the ways in which some police officers abuse their authoritative power without accountability.
We do not live (nor do we want to) in a police state. We live in a democracy, which means that we have a government that is for the people and not a government that is designed to control the people. We are standing here at the crossroads of freedom and equality during a year when we are celebrating and commemorating American history moments — from the 1964 Civil Rights Act to King's Nobel Peace Prize. It is an interesting time because the arc that King and Parker talked about, the one that has been dormant for so long, is now being bent once again, even though it may not be bending as quickly as we would like.
During this time of historic anniversaries, we have seen what it means to have a grand jury make decisions that the rest of the country either cannot or will not accept. We have witnessed the repeated disappointment that some communities feel when our president does not adequately address their hurt and pain. It is almost as if he does not understand how tiring and frustrating it is to have to prove to people, everyday, that #BlackLivesMatter.
When we yell and say that "We Can't Breathe," we are saying that we feel as if the American political and social system is doing all that it can to squeeze the very life out of us. "We Can't Breathe" means that we are tired of the stress that comes from breathing while black in this country. "We Can't Breathe" means that we want the system to see us and to respect us. "We Can't Breathe," when yelled by a diverse group of American citizens, means that we recognize that this country was built by and belongs to all of us.
We are in the midst of a social movement, and those of us who know the racial and economic history of our country must be charged with the responsibility of teaching it so that we do not repeat it. The arc of the moral universe is long, but together, we can finally and completely bend it all the way to justice.
Karsonya Wise Whitehead is an assistant professor at Loyola University Maryland and the author of "Notes from a Colored Girl: The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Frances Davis" and the forthcoming "Letters to My Black Sons: Raising Boys in a Post-Racial America." She can be reached at kewhitehead@loyola.edu.