I am not black. 

I am middle-class and female and both lucky enough and young enough to never have experienced racism, but I am angry.

I am angry that someone can kill an unarmed teenager and still be able to say to the world that his conscience is clean. I am angry that someone can kill an unarmed teenager and be rewarded with more than four-hundred thousand dollars. I am angry that someone can kill an unarmed teenager and not even be tried for involuntary manslaughter, the same crime that an architect that designed a faulty building could be charged with. I am angry that someone can kill an unarmed teenager and not have to face any of the consequences.

I am angry that someone can kill an unarmed teenager and be congratulated for it.

We pride ourselves on our justice system that works so well, that dispense sentences so equally and protects us all, blind to colour and class.

Has this lauded justice system degraded so much that a dead boy’s killer is not even put on trial? Has our justice system degraded so much that we let a biased prosecutor, whose father was a policeman killed by a suspect, and a biased jury, composed of nine white persons, but only three black persons, decide the case of a white policeman?

Has our police force degraded so much that a policeman, who has served since 2009, cannot even handle a confrontation with an eighteen-year old without using lethal force? Has our police force degraded so much that the corpse of someone’s brother, someone’s son, someone’s best friend, someone, can be left in the street for four hours?

Have we degraded so much that we do not even care? Have we degraded so much that we side with a man supported by the KKK, a hate group considered by some to be a domestic terror organization? Have we degraded so much that we are willing to smear a victim and demonize both his city and his parents for grieving?

This is not the country that boasts so loudly of the American Dream. This is not the country that boasts so loudly of freedom and equality of all. This is not the country that is supposed to lead the free world.

We the people means all of the people, means everyone, not just white citizens.

This is a country I am ashamed to live in.

Fourteen more teenagers, all minorities, at least six African-American, have been killed by policemen since, and not all of these will be justified by a grand jury. One of these was Tamir Rice, who was not even a teenager. He was twelve years old, and he, like Michael Brown and all these other victims, will never got to college, will never marry, will never have children, because someone took away their right to live, someone who will likely never be punished for doing so.

We need to wake up. We need to pay attention. We need to start listening. We need to demand justice not just this black unarmed teenager, but also for all the others that have come before him, and all the others that will come after him if we do not change. We need to demand justice for all the Michael Browns, all of the Emmett Tills’s and Sharon Mosleys and Trayvon Martins and Kathryn Johnstons that Brown has preceded, and all of those that he will precede.

This is what our country has become, and I am angry.

If you are not angry, you are not awake. If you are not angry, you are not paying attention.

If you are not angry, you are not listening.

Please, listen.