This heartbreaking but powerful video shows how black parents talk to their kids about the police
Now is the time to educate our children about race.
This video is hard to watch. It’s emotional, raw and it’s the harsh reality for black parents and children in America.
As protests and riots rage across the US following the death of George Floyd, the African-American man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes, people the world over are calling for an end of racial injustice.
This powerful video by Cut shows black parents talking to their children about how to deal with police in America.
Watch video below.
In the video, parents talk to their children about what to say and do if they are stopped by police, and they share their own terrifying experiences with law enforcement.
It’s impossible to not well up watching Arielle, a little girl who starts to cry as her dad explains to that he’s been tasered by the police.
Or when a mum asks her teenage daughter, “Why would a police officer assume that you did something bad?”
And fighting back tears, she answers, “Maybe because of the colour of my skin?”
Absolutely heartbreaking as Arielle bursts into tears and is comforted by her dad.
What’s even more distressing is that this video by Cut was originally posted to YouTube in 2017. It went viral then and it is again now, three years later and seemingly nothing has changed.
Lex Scott, the founder of the civil rights organisation United Front Party, and Utah’s Black Lives Matter chapter spoke about the heartbreaking video when it was first released.
“We have seen that police profile black people, pull us over more [in routine traffic stops], and we see video after video of the brutalisation of black people by police,” he said at the time. “But we will continue working towards change.”
The George Floyd movement is being felt worldwide and it’s important to note that social injustice is not just an issue in America, it’s also still taking place in Australia.
It’s been more than 30 years since the 1987 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and some of the recommendations from the findings were never implemented and it’s estimated hundreds more have died in custody since.
Now is absolutely the time to have conversations with our children about racism and educate them about racial equality.
Let’s be the change our world needs.
