News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Protests and riots have spiked throughout the nation in response to racism with individuals such as George Floyd and Ahmad Arbery the faces of the protests.
IMPACT Cookeville’s president Jasen Knight said it is unfortunate racism issues are still present in this day and age. He said it’s about time these protests have begun.
“This event that’s happened is not the first of many issues that’s caused this course in our country,” Knight said. “It’s getting a lot of global attention, and when the rest of the world knows that there’s an issue, America is surely going to have to start listening.”
Knight said he believes the core issue is a specific culture group was brought into this country centuries ago and were deemed inferior. He said there’s an ingrained mentality in our culture’s subconscious that a certain group has dominance over the other.
“This country was based off of rebellion, it was based off of what you have as freedom in a nation,” Knight said. “I just really think part of this conversation is we’re not having these open dialogues with both sides of the story.”
IMPACT vice president Dee Prince said he believes racist issues are repairable, but cannot be obliterated.
“What I would like to see is a word that a lot of people haven’t been using, and I don’t know if it’s because they haven’t been thinking about it, but it’s ‘justice,'” Prince said. “Why is it that a black man in police custody has to die for an alleged forgery charge, but a white male that cowardly goes in and praises with people in a church, kills nine black people, and he’s still around to talk about it.”
Prince said he can accept Justice being blind, but not deafened or mute. He said individuals guilty of killing blacks, including police men, have received mild punishments for too long.
“I believe we as people, we have this thing where we lump things together,” Prince said. “If you’ve been done wrong by this type of person that looks like this, you may see the guy that’s walking down the street that looks a little shady.”
IMPACT Cookeville brings together people of all races to build community. The group focuses on inclusion through positive impact on those who have been marginalized.
