I am a 20-year old black woman from Houston, Texas who comes from a household of educated black men and women. My brother and sister are black. My mom and dad are black. My nephew is black. My sister in law is black. As a black person in America, I live under different circumstances than my white counterparts. To take it one step further, Black and White people live in two different Americas. 

To illustrate that point, I ask – have you ever stepped on an elevator and the lady next to you starts clutching her purse for dear life because of the color of your skin and the things she been conditioned to believe about black people? Unfortunately, I have grown immune to these types of situations. So much so that I don’t even get upset anymore because for so long I, and most people of color, have been put into this box and treated like this from a very young age. 

I have never been oblivious or hidden from the world around me and what is going on it. My parents and I always chose to inform ourselves on the current events around us. One of my earlier memories is a man shooting an unarmed teenager named Trayvon Martin. I recall clearly the uproar of people fighting for justice for this teenager who was only 17 years old at the time he was killed – that was only 5 years older than me. Watching the news and processing all that was happening didn’t really hit me but I certainly knew what George Zimmerman did was wrong and that he should have been in prison or punished appropriately – and he wasn’t. I could not wrap my head around why he wasn’t punished. It was astonishing to me and one of those things that as a 12-year-old I just could not understand. 

Fast forward eight years later and all of those same emotions and uproar came right back up in my life and the lives of the people that make up the black community still fighting for justice. The death of George Floyd will be something that we all have to live with forever. We witnessed a man begging for his life and calling out for his mother. When this happened, I was overcome with so much emotion because when I walk down the stairs, I see my father a Black man, who could have easily been the person whose neck that the officer was driving his knee into. I never been so uneasy and worried in my life. I didn’t know what to do with these emotions, but I tried to get online and let my voice be heard. I signed petitions, I donated money to different funds, but for some reason none of it felt like enough. 

I still don’t feel like I am doing enough as black woman living in this time where we need so much change. I have been on calls and Zoom meetings about social injustice and I have expressed that my voice felt like it wasn’t being heard or that I didn’t feel like my impact. During one of those meetings, a wise man spoke up and told me that we can never stop talking about what is happening right now. There is no way that I will stop talking about this. I want my children to know, my nieces and nephews to know, my grandchildren to know and I am going to make it a point to educate them about what has been going on for too long. They have to know about what has been going on not only in the last 5 months but in the last 400 years. There has been a tremendous amount of pain and exhaustion in the Black community because of not only the killings of unarmed Black men by police officers, but the constant racial profiling, the constant putting down of people of color. 

The pain is felt throughout the whole black community because it could have easily been my brother, uncle, aunt, dad, sister, mother, or even me. We are the ones who have to deal with being Black in America. The question that I continue to ask myself is who is next, what is next, when is there going to be real change? I love the word change because it is such a powerful word that carries so much weight. Change is what we are going to do to overcome what has been holding us back for too long. Change is uncomfortable for everyone but change is necessary. Whether people agree or disagree, creating change is how we build a new, safer and equitable world for the next generation. Change creates a new world for us and others. Change doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time, nurturing, love, and care. Change takes time and commitment to doing better day in and day out. As a nation we are going to have to want to change to see better days. 

What I have been most focused on is how we educate ourselves as a nation. We have to learn and acknowledge what is real and what is not real about racial injustice and inequality. My Hartford women’s basketball team has attempted to do just that – we have been sending emails about important things that we should know to help educate our teammates and communities, no matter the color of our skin. Black history is American history. We need to learn it and understand it. 

As a specific point of emphasis for education, one of the most important factors for the nation at the current moment is to educate ourselves about the voting process. Voting in the upcoming general election and for any other state or local elections is critical for change because it provides an opportunity to attempt to elect officials in leadership positions that are aligned to our ideas and who support us. Angela Davis said it best when discussing her views on the upcoming election, “it will be about choosing a candidate who can be most effectively pressured into allowing more space for the evolving anti-racist movement.” While this is not going to solve all our problems, but it will help us move into different direction. A direction where change is encouraged.

As a team we talked about the changes that we want the America East to see and everyone else to see. We wanted to be a place where we wear Black Lives Matter on our t-shirts, we want to voice our opinion in interviews, we want to be very outspoken on the idea of social injustice. We know as a collective that there is unlimited potential for what we can accomplish because we have the support of each other and our coaching staff. Our coaching staff, here at the University of Hartford, has been our biggest supporters in this time of injustice and inequality. Our graduate assistant, Nola Henry, gave us firsthand insight on what it felt like to march, protest for change, and how we can use our platforms and voices, as a student-athletes, to help make an impact on the world around us. She showed us her strength and vulnerability, in this fight against social injustices as a young black woman, just like us. Hear us, see us, and stand with us!

I am black woman who will not stop speaking about change.