Hispanic, Asian, and African American. What do you see when you picture those in one picture? Is it the short stature? The darkness or lightness of skin tones? The dark or light eye color? The curly hair? The tilted features? I want to tell you what I see.

I am sixteen, a high school junior, and an immigrant to the United States. I came into a more dangerous darkness than the one I am in because of my blindness. I was uncommunicative, alone, and lost. Yet, those people, the ones you kill so mercilessly, are the ones who welcomed me into their homes and hearts more than my own family had in my life. So, I introduced and welcomed them into pieces of me that no one had seen before. Their kindness, truthfulness, and loyalty is what I see. Maybe it's because I can't see their skin, and if that's the case, then that's a divine blessing, and don't take it too harshly, but I wish you were blind, too. Maybe your hearts will become purer that way.

We live in a world where if an Asian commits a crime, all Asian Americans pay the price. How come Americans are not charged for an American officer who pinned an African American to the ground and choked him to death? Is that what's called equality? Why must this fear be instilled in those people your schools honor in history classes? Why must I, a high school junior, worry about maybe a government or law enforcement official attacking one of the people I love so dearly because of their skin color? Why can't I live worrying about passing my SATs and state standardized tests and college majors instead?

I don't think you truly know what is happening. Because if you did, you would do something about it. Racism doesn't only affect the family and friends of those you murder because you have the power to. Keep in mind that those people are someone to someone if they are not to you, the same way your spouse or best friends were nobody to you and you were nobody to them.

I will not keep you too long. But just answer this: Is this going to end? Are you going to continue to use your power to murder innocents because they don't like the way they look? Lord have mercy if one day you choose to kill someone with a white cane because their cane hit your ankle while they were passing you, or because you simply don't like the fact they are in your country and you can. Or maybe you are going to kill someone because they have spoken up about inaccessible roads for their wheelchairs. I dream of becoming a mother one day, what if the law decides that I'm incapable of taking care of my child because I'm blind, all because I asked for assistance to learn the right way to breastfeed? If I find someone passed out on the ground and call 911, what guarantees me that they will help once they arrive and discover that I was saving a dark woman? If you are raising your eyebrows at those catastrophic theories, then show me and everyone else that we can trust you.

The only thing I am asking of you is... Please, please, please do something about this. Prove to us that the reason the police and government exist is so that we can feel safe, not in danger. Show us that you care. But only if you do.

Sincerely,

Someone who cares