Oakland, California (CNN) - Nia Wilson was standing on MacArthur BART station in Oakland, California on Sunday, July 22nd when she was stabbed in an unprovoked attack. The police don’t know why culprit John Cowell, a 27 year old white male, carried out the stabbing.
Huffington Post writer Zeba Blay writes about the ‘anxiety of being a black woman’. Latifa Wilson describes her last moments with her sister saying, “She’s just yelling my name, ‘Tifah, Tifah, Tifah,’ and I said, ‘I got you, baby, I got you. Just calm down,’ because she has real bad anxiety.” Blay’s article talks about how fearful it is to be a black woman in society these days.
Wilson’s death has shaken up society and social media. Anne Hathway came up with a heart-breaking response that begs for our society to wake up. She posted a picture of Wilson on Instagram and in her caption wrote how white people need to start accepting their white privilege and realizing that we live in a racist society. Hathaway brings to attention the fears related with being a black individual in current American society.
Black woman are truly marginalized in today’s society. With the rise of cop brutality, it is dangerous for any black person to even go out of the house. People who are African-American/Black are twice as likely to be killed by a police officer while being unarmed compared to a Caucasian/White person. (The Guardian). Black woman have it even harder and it is tremendously scary for them to walk the streets at night. We talk about how we have come a ‘long way’ when it comes to racism and sexism. But we need to realize that we still have a long way to go. Racist and sexist tendencies govern our society to this day. Cases like Nia Wilson’s are begging for a wake up call.
