Reflecting on Jacob Blake and Racial Injustice
August 30, 2020
On Monday, police shot Jacob Blake in front of his children. This horrific display of police violence against a Black man is the most recent, public example of racial injustice. As we have seen too often, when the state enacts violence against the people it is entrusted to protect and serve, it alters the course of individual lives forever. It also continually traumatizes and retraumatizes Black people and communities of color. We might rightfully ask if words are enough, if protests are enough, if reform is enough. As long as systems exist that dehumanize Black people and communities at any level, our question as individuals and as a mentoring movement should not be “Is it enough?”, but rather, “What else can I do?”
While Jacob’s children will personally bear the trauma of what they witnessed, all Black children will continue to collectively bear the trauma of state violence and its repercussions. The harm is both collective and personal, and so is the healing. We reassert the urgent need to provide space for the trauma Black young people are processing. Again, we must continue to stand as supports every single day in a march toward progress, justice, and equity – as a broad movement, in our own communities, and in our own families.
Mentors and all those who care about young people may feel ill-equipped or overwhelmed showing up in affirming and supportive relationships with youth around racial violence, especially mentors who are considering their own privileges and biases. We also know that many Black and brown people serve as mentors to young people of color, and they bring their perspectives and lived experiences to these relationships.
MENTOR has compiled our key resources that seek to help mentoring programs and mentors better show up for and with young people including a recent Black Youth Town Hall centering the powerful voices of and guidance from our young leaders. As you process, take action, and support young people, access resources here: https://www.mentoring.org/racial-equity.
This is at the essence of all of our humanity and our ability to live up to our individual and collective aspirations in Kenosha and every place in America where we must deconstruct all forms of racial violence by understanding our past, processing our present, and building our future.
MENTOR National and MENTOR Greater Milwaukee will continue to work at the front of the fight to dismantle and disrupt white supremacy and continued anti-Blackness. It’s imperative that we combat hate speech and violence as that displayed this week in Kenosha against people protesting violence, injustice, and inequity.
Mentoring is a critical support for our youth in the continued fight against the ugliness of hate and racism that persist in our country today. Locally and nationally in the mentoring movement, we link arms in this pursuit.
LaNelle Ramey
Executive Director
MENTOR Greater Milwaukee
David Shapiro
CEO
MENTOR National