08 Robin White: Our Next Generations

Transcript:

When you look at Parkland School and the shooting there and those students that stood up. And then you have all these adults telling them, these are not your thoughts. That you didn’t come up with that idea. Our youth are there. They see so much happening. They’re surrounded with so much that is impacting and they want to make a difference but they’re constantly being told that you’re too young, these are not your thoughts. In the ‘60s, you had babies as young as 3 and 5 years old that were saying, I’m fighting for my freedom. They couldn’t even say freedom but they knew something was wrong with society. Our youth knows that today and we are not in a line with them. And even we talk about Black Lives Matter and, you know, the pushback on that. What are we supposed to say? Black Lives Matter Too? Black Lives Matter Also? When you look at what is happening with our own black men, their only weapon is the color of their skin. That is the only weapon that they carry but now it is transferring over to black women as well. We have no safe place in society. We are not safe. When law enforcement is used against us as a weaponry. When my everyday life, living while black, I’m afraid to go anywhere, where I am afraid of what might happen. This is not normal. And our young people are standing up and we’re not standing up with them. Society is not standing up with them. They’re saying, ‘Sit down and shut up.’ And, our babies, they can’t afford to do that. We’re talking about they’re our next generations. We should be sitting at the table with them, teaching them and learning from them because they will be making decisions that will impact us in the future. And if we don’t ready them, if we don’t prepare them, we are in trouble. We are in trouble. They are ready. They’re ready to learn but they are also ready to teach. We are not ready. The adults are not ready. You know, it’s like they can’t think for themselves until they’re 18. What’s up with that? They don’t have any thoughts. They don’t see what’s going on around them. This is not impacting their heart, that they don’t feel? When your classmate is shot down beside you or people are being killed across the country, you don’t think that impacts our youth? And, we are not standing behind them. We are not fighting for them. We are not fighting with them. We are just setting on the side, we’re setting on the side. And we can’t afford to do that. We need to let them know that we are here. What can we do with you? You know, they have ideas. We should be the facilitators to help them implement their ideas. That’s what we should be doing. And their consciousness is alive. Now they are woke. They are wide woke! So we don’t want them to go to sleep. We don’t want them to give up because it’s gonna be a really dark inside place if we do.