Black people started Memorial Day.
It was originally called Decoration Day and it included a parade, but the most remarkable detail to me is that the newly freed dug up bodies of Union soldiers from mass graves, identified them and gave proper burials.
👇🏽
Houston Police Officer Ashley Gonzalez, a former Marine, was recorded on video casually using the N-word and other
anti-Black slurs to describe people she encounters on duty. She is not under stress, not reacting in the moment, and not speaking privately. She is relaxed, comfortable, and openly describing how she speaks to Black people she arrests, even saying she feels “at peace” doing it.
This is not just about one officer’s language. It raises deeper questions about what policing in America is tolerating and, in some cases, rewarding. When someone can hold these views and still be entrusted with a badge, a gun, and discretionary power over people’s freedom, it suggests a failure in screening, supervision, and accountability systems. This is exactly the type of bias that must be identified and filtered out long before someone is put in a position of authority.
The Houston Police Department has relieved Officer Gonzalez of duty and opened an internal investigation, but that cannot be the end of it. Every arrest, use of force, and report involving Black individuals should be reviewed for bias and potential misconduct. Situations like this are not isolated anomalies, they reflect broader structural risks in policing that demand serious scrutiny and reform.
🎥: @fox26houston @candicematthewsdr