I will not be silent. Black lives matter.
“Please. I can’t breathe, they are going to kill me, everything hurts.”
Those words were among the last things George Floyd said before he died under the knee of the Minneapolis police. Protests are still sweeping the country more than a week after Floyd was killed, and I know many of you out there are feeling anger and pain. I am too.
Floyd is just one example of a black person dying at the hand of injustice and racism. There are so many others, including Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Sean Reed, and Tony McDade, who have all lost their lives because of the color of their skin. The list goes on and on, and it must stop.
The School of Greatness has always focused on positive growth, change, love, and healing, and I realize that racial justice is an essential part of that. So I’m committing to that now. Because we can’t all achieve greatness and live our best lives if we aren’t all truly equal. We can’t achieve greatness by staying silent.
I understand that there’s a lot of work I need to do personally, both internally and externally, and that this work will take time. I’m gonna make mistakes, I’m gonna say the wrong thing, and you might as well. But my intention is to help build a more kind, equal, just, loving world, and I hope that’s your intention, too.
So today on The School of Greatness, I sit down with an old friend and one of LA’s foremost black leaders, Reverend Michael Beckwith, to talk about racism, white privilege, and what we can do to fight for our fellow humans.