Reflective Essay Sample on George Floyd Injustice

Did you know that African Americans make up less than 13% of the population but are killed at more than twice the rate of white Americans? I was sitting in my living room when I heard about what happened to George Floyd. It was on the news and it was pretty sad. Watching what happened to him made me feel bad. I can't even begin to imagine what he was feeling at the time. I definitely can’t imagine how his family felt when they heard. The death of George Floyd made me upset and I hope in the future that others like George Floyd will not have to go through this. 

I was sitting on the couch when I saw on the news what happened. I turned on the TV when I got home from school. George Floyd was a 46-year-old African American. All of this happened to him because the cashier thought that he was using a counterfeit 20 dollar bill. The cashier said that he wished he would have never called the cops. I agree. If he would have just let George go, none of this would have happened. I know that the world doesn't work like that though and that the cashier had to call the cops. It just sucks because he shouldn’t have been using fake money but he didn’t deserve to die because of it. I just feel bad for him. I feel bad for his entire family. I also feel bad for the police officers that work in the police station that people think are bad because of what the others did. It's sad to know that someone could do that to another person, without any hesitation at all. Once I was done watching the news, I decided that I wanted to find out more information about him. I went to YouTube to see if anyone posted about it but I didn’t see much until the day or two after. A few months later I found out that the police officers were being charged with murder. That made me very happy. I was relieved that someone was gonna get punished for what they did. All three of the police officers were charged and sent to jail. I was pleased when I heard about their charges. The whole thing with George sparked the black lives matter protest. I thought that the protests were gonna be good and bring attention to the people about what some of their officers are doing, but it wasn’t what I expected it to be. Some of the people there used the protest for good and to prove that they stood by him. I thought that it was amazing that people were doing that for his family. Others that were involved were using it as an excuse to destroy property and burn down buildings. They were misunderstanding the reason people were doing the protest. I was kinda disturbed at what some people were doing. The whole situation has made me view some things differently. I used to view police officers as people who were in the job to help everyone and not just certain people. I’m not saying that all of them are bad but some are in the job for the wrong reasons.

I hope that the situation opened others' eyes the way it did mine. I always knew that racism was a thing but I never really saw anything about it. I know that I can’t do anything about the situation. The whole thing is out of my hands but I feel like I can help with educating people about George. I think letting people know about him and many others will help it in the big picture. Maybe at some point, African Americans won’t have to deal with some people's ignorance.