At a time when African-American George Floyd’s death has sparked global outrage, this inspiring TEDx Rainier talk on the roots of racial injustice is worth your time. If you have ever wondered how we can solve this problem, it is time to understand how it came to be in the first place. “The present racism crisis suffers from the lack of attention to root causes. So, why does the unarmed killings of continue to happen? I think because we have the wrong diagnosis and the wrong cure. We feel the problem is isolated to a few racist white men and we tend to think the cure should always revolve around education,” mentioned Megan Ming Francis, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington (UW).

Emphasising on how “blacks are treated as a proxy or a substitute for criminality”, she said, “To combat racial crimes, we must expand our vision and our responsibility to what civil rights actually means. We must include the battle against racist violence in our understanding of civil rights. Instead of education, what if we place ‘freedom from racist violence’ at the crux of what it means to be free and equal in the United States. It doesn’t mean dislodging education but it means racism and white supremacy can be brought down. Books and silence won’t save the lives. Activism, courage and challenging the status quo would.”