It shouldn’t be hard to treat people with love and respect – Brunswick News

It has been an ugly few days across America. The murder of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands, or knees in this case, of a white Minneapolis police officer has led to nationwide protests. While most of those protests have been peaceful, some have turned violent.

The anger that is being expressed right now comes from a long history of how black people have been treated in America. It started hundreds of years ago when they were brought to the New World as slaves and were considered nothing more than property. A war had to be fought just to convince half of this nation this so-called Land of the Free that it was wrong to own other people.

Even after the Civil War, laws were instituted to make sure that the rights of black people were legally suppressed. These Jim Crow laws continued to proliferate the idiotic ideal that whites were not only superior to blacks, but that the sides shouldnt intermingle. It would take 100 years after the Civil War ended for reason and righteousness to reign supreme and do away with that backwards way of thinking.

We have come a long way since the 1960s.

Subsequent generations have come to realize, as they spend more time around each other, that we are all Gods children that He created all of us in His image.

Even with as much progress as we have made as a society, the ghosts of our past still linger. When you see tragedies that shouldnt have happened like the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, the death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville and the death of Ahmaud Arbery right here in our backyard it brings hundreds of years of injustice back to the forefront.

That anger has led some down a path of violence and destruction as a way to express their dissatisfaction with the system. Even if the anger is justified, this method of protest will not help in the long run.

Overzealous police arent helping calm down the situation either, especially when they deliberately fire at journalists who are just doing their jobs by reporting on what is happening. As much as this weekend has been about the historical mistreatment of black people, it is also shined a light that we need better police practices across the board.

The only way we will all be truly equal is for all of us to treat each other like we would like to be treated. The Bible verses that make up the Golden Rule dont mention any exceptions like race, political affiliation or sexual orientation. It simply commands that we treat others the way we would want to be treated.

If we treat each other with the love and compassion that we have been commanded to do so, this world will be a better place. Until then, this vicious cycle will just continue to repeat.

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It shouldn't be hard to treat people with love and respect - Brunswick News