BLACK LIVES MATTER
What Does Justice Look Like For Ahmaud Arbery, His Family, and The Black Community?
All eyes are on Georgia as three White men face charges for felony murder and attempted false imprisonment.
The story of Ahmaud Arbery’s death sits like a heavy rain cloud over the American conscious. And for Black people, it feels like the sky is falling all over again. After all, we’ve seen so many cases where justice is delayed and then categorically denied.
On February 23, 2020, 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery went jogging but never made it back home. Instead, according to prosecutors and the video footage, Travis and Gregory McMichael chased Arbery and then “gunned him down” on that bitter-cold day in Georgia. This incident is every Black parent’s worst nightmare come true, that their son or daughter could be out jogging and lose their life because of racism.
Arbery’s father called his son’s killing a modern-day lynching. And, according to Vox, “lynchings do not require evidence. Guilt is presumed based on appearance.” So when two White men saw a Black man jogging up the street, they assumed he was doing something wrong and was guilty of theft even. Tragedies like this one show how much further we have to go as a nation, to…
