Black Lives Matter – How We Can Help
By Erin Hunter
Black communities across our nation are facing horrific inequality, racism, and injustice. And if that’s not enough, they are also facing devastation from COVID, and COVID-related trauma. The recent video snapshot the public has gleaned into the horrors of police brutality has shed light on racism that has been going on for hundreds of years. Too many black men, women, and children have lost their lives at the hands of hatred.
It has been said that the pain of slavery faced in generations before is carried in the DNA of blacks living today. While we cannot erase the past, we all must acknowledge it and learn from it. We must walk hand in hand with our black brothers and sisters and fight for justice.
“History, despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage need not be lived again.”
For those like me who are not of color, we likely will not be able to truly understand the pain and suffering in the black community. But we must listen, empathize, and act to make positive change. Protests, both peaceful and otherwise, have made impactful steps towards progress but there is so much that still needs to be done. Through legal, justice and policy that enforces equality to raising awareness to changing prejudice or unperceived bias.
At Design for People, we use empathic design principles to connect with audiences. We take care to objectively see and prevent unperceived bias in the work we create and the stories we tell. This has been a priority from the beginning, and we will strive to continue to do this better.
We believe the beauty of the U.S. is in the diversity of its people – their individuality, ability, culture, ethnicity, creed, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. It’s not so much a melting pot where we all blend together to form some amorphous mush, but a patchwork quilt that shows a multitude of diverse patches where no two are alike but all are equally beautiful.
To our black brothers and sisters, we stand with you and together we will make change for justice and equality with hopes that racism will be snuffed out once and for all like blowing out a match.
Maya Angelou’s Poem “On the Pulse of Morning”
“The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams.”
