Kareem Abdul-Jabbar reflects on George Floyd protests - Los Angeles Times

Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible — even if you’re choking on it — until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere. As long as we keep shining that light, we have a chance of cleaning it wherever it lands. But we have to stay vigilant, because it’s always still in the air.

This is the best analogy I think I’ve ever heard about racism. It’s so simple, but completely perfect at describing the situation. This isn’t new, it’s just that shining a light on systemic racism today is exposing things that many of us, myself included, simply didn’t think about enough.

Thank goodness for smartphones at a time like this too. A major reason the light is so bright right now is that everyone has a camera that can document what is happening right now in remarkable clarity, and social networks make it so this information gets in front of millions of people in seconds. This can of course be used to spread misinformation, and venturing into certain trending topics will get you to that pretty quickly, but the truth constantly outshines the lies. I can’t imagine how different this would be if it was just 20 years ago an we relied on news crews and a few people with SD camcorders to capture what was happening.