The outrage over the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery is justified. I hope that everyone responsible will be held accountable by receiving very long prison sentences.
Here's what's bothering me. What is lost in all the machinations for justice is a sense of who the victims were as human beings. In other words, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery are now and will forever be defined by the circumstances of their deaths, which by default, links them to, and amplifies the stories of the white men who murdered them. George and Ahmaud lived lives filled with stories of their own, chapters of experiences which are buried beneath headlines, pundits, and soundbites. The media hangs around until it's distracted by a random Kardashian or another black man murdered for no good reason. Then the cycle begins again, the new name placed alongside previous victims, and so it goes, and goes and goes.
Perhaps some of you are already doing this, but while you're reading about or posting information relevant to these tragedies, please take time to also discover whatever you can about the lives of Ahmaud or George, or Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Rodney King, or Amadou Diallo. There's not much available about Roosevelt Townes and Robert McDaniels, however, the gruesome details of their deaths will live on in perpetuity.
A human life should not be measured or valued this way. Do not only remember Ahmaud as the black man who was "chased after and shot," or George as the black man "on the ground with a knee on his neck." They did not deserve what happened to them. What they do deserve is to be defined as something immensely greater than senseless acts perpetrated by white men. Murder is not a legacy. A more powerful form of justice is to hold these men in our hearts and remember them by prioritizing their humanity, again, and again, and again, for as long as we draw breath.