I don't Understand the Question

When the lockdown came everyone was shocked.

"What do you mean it's forbidden to go out for a walk?"

"Are you crazy? I should send an SMS that I'm planning to go to the supermarket?"

"No clubs, no music events, no nothing?"

People witnessed their freedom disappear overnight and at the same time, they faced mass death.

They realised that life as they knew it is so fragile. You can’t take it for granted!

A couple of months later we witnessed the brutal killing of George Floyd in Minnesota. And "suddenly" a movement was born putting us in front of a reality called racism. And people were shocked again.

"What do you mean they kill people because they are black?"

"Didn't we solve this problem a long time ago?"

"I thought we were in 2020, no?"

No! Of course not! We lived our lives in a bubble. We thought.... no, not "we thought"... “we would like to believe”, there you go. We would like to believe that because we are not racists, everyone isn’t a racist. We would like to believe that because a law about human rights was voted everyone changed. We would like to believe everything was ok.

We forgot that the day the revolution wins is the day we should work to establish it. The day we should take action to protect it.

Terrified she might be raising a racist, a white mom once asked her 16-year-old son "Son, would you ever be friends or have an affair with a black person?" And her son replied, "Mom, I don't understand your question". So she held her son tight and cried a river.

He couldn't understand what she was asking because he doesn't measure people by their colour but from their actions, beliefs, and character. He didn't even understand the question.

We can’t talk about the future without solving primitive issues. We can't be blind in front of reality. We should face it, eliminate it otherwise we can't move forward.

We should never feel that the fight is over until the moment we receive from everyone the answer "I don't understand the question", even better until the reply becomes "I don't even know what the question was".

This article appeared first in Costantino's blog.