African Americans being targeted and murdered by police officers is nothing new, but what’s new is that this has become normal for people. After the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012,  people started protesting, and in 2013, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter started circling the Internet.

Millions of people, many of whom were black people, were working to make their voices heard, speaking out about this issue. Many protesters were laying down on the ground to represent the fallen. Others were holding up signs and yelling through megaphones.

However, there has been a mass desensitizing to African American murders by police officers, treating this like it is an everyday thing. In addition, it feels like people feel that no matter what they do, they know deep down the murders to black people will not stop. The reaction has changed for some because they know that these actions will change nothing. Police will still kill minorities and face no consequences.

According to Huffpost, after Colin Kaepernick’s first protest, by which he knelt down during the national anthem, police killed at least 223 black Americans in 2016. When you are exposed to anything for a long period of time, you start to become numb to it, and you are less likely to respond to it.

Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr. was a 21 year old black male shot and killed at the hand of police officers on Nov. 22, 2018. Bradford was shot three times from behind in a panicked crowd, He posed no threat and was carrying a legal gun. Since he was a black man, he was identified as the shooter and was shot to death. Police fired 3 kill shots, 2 of which were the back of the neck and head.

Yet, no one talked about Bradford for a whole 24 hours. Some said a little something then moved on, Where was his “#justiceforEmantic” “? It was barely seen or talked about. It is  a normal thing and there are too many black people being killed to be recognized, we are numb to it.

Humanity has become desensitized  to murder, loss of lives, hate crimes, etc. How worse can it get? Where do we go from here? Is there an end to murder and hate crimes against black people?