Hope becoming a number

I noticed very clear similarities between Jacqueline Woodson’s experience with the Civil Rights Movement and the historical time we are living in currently in regards to the Black Lives Matter Movement, the Trump administration, and the Coronavirus pandemic. There was a specific part that I read that resonated a lot with me which was when Hope was picked apart as suspicious and therefore intensely inspected by the police as the family was trying to visit their uncle in jail. Woodson writes an interesting quote here, “He is Hope Austin Woodson the Second, part of a long line of Woodsons-- doctors and lawyers and teachers-- but as quickly as THAT! He can become a number.” (Woodson 271). This is a common theme that I feel like I have heard a lot recently in the fight against police brutality towards black americans. After the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, and so many more, I remember instagram being flooded with information on them as people. We were able to learn about their lives, their families, things they had said and did during their lives, their professions, and the brutality of their murders. At different protests, there is a common chant, “Say Their Names”, and this is also a part of the push to see them as people, not just adding their lost lives to a number.

 Hope only being seen as a black man, and therefore suspicious, is an issue that is still very prevalent in America. I have noticed it has become very common for the administration to resort to numbers in order to downplay a crises. Another example, besides that of African Americans being killed at the hands of police officers, is in the Coronavirus pandemic. In an effort to compensate for the mishandling of this pandemic, the administration turned to numbers in comparison to other countries instead of acknowledging that those were important lives lost as well.

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