Caution: Societal Dilemmas Revealed In Response to Pepsi

http://bgr.com/2017/04/05/pepsi-ad-kendall-jenner-tone-deaf-commercial/

           To whomever reads this, I hope you will postpone doubt and judgment to read the following post. When you are finished, I hope you will have understood my message for all that I meant to say, and nothing of what I didn’t. This post will be blunt, but I promise you, it will be honest.

In the last week, Pepsi has been the focus in social media controversy. In their latest ad featuring Kendall Jenner in a ‘Pepsi Protest’ they made a few too many mistakes. However, there are many people who are looking at the commercial as being insensitive ONLY toblack people and the Black Lives Matter movement. As a black person, I find this to be ridiculous.

              As black men and women we do not hold a cornerstone on protests, nor do we have a right to categorize everything to being about race, which is often done and referred to as pulling the ‘race card’. 

http://jax1776.deviantart.com/art/Race-Card-505362227

In an attempt to gain equality, black people have also segregated themselves and often equate racism as being something that only affects black Americans. There are even some who have the misconception that black people cannot be racist which isn’t true either. While I do believe that police brutality and the plight of black people has been systematically engrained into the culture of America, I do not think that the way we are reacting to these issues will take us forward. Instead, I’m very worried that these reactions only hold America back from the progress it should have made a long time ago.

              The real issue regarding the Pepsi commercial is that it downplayed what a real protest is like and what injustices are inflicted on people during one. Protests can be very stressful and can often end in violence. Many people have been arrested for protesting in America in the last 3 years which should be illegal since it goes against our first amendment rights: “Congress shall make no law respectingan establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; orabridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the peoplepeaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress ofgrievances". And the police are given an overabundance of riot gear for an event that is peaceful in nature and should never advance that far.

Lately, protests and riots have initiated often all over America and the results have been dismal. I will never say that these protests and riots were useless or unnecessary because they were needed to show America that we still have deeply rooted issues. It is time for America, as a whole, to face the injustices that have been dealt to those who did not deserve it. I have said it once before and I’ll say it again that America is a bastard nation that has done the worst possible things to generations of people over its entire lifetime. But it is also a nation can thrive when we all work together. The real problem that we have is that we look at things personally and after becoming jaded refuse to see the truth for what it is. We refuse to connect the dots and DO something that will make a lasting change.

              Since high school I could feel a war brewing. I felt deep in my soul that America would become a battleground once more and brother would kill brother; sister would betray sister; and couples would abandon each other for differences that do not matter. If we continue the way we are, war will be inevitable. I, who am not close to God at all, will be praying that before that happens we see what needs to be done so we can avoid this fate.