I’ve been quiet on social media for the past few days as tragedies were unfolding.

I had a hard time coping. You wouldn’t believe how many times I cried just writing/editing this.

There is also the fact that I’m in Japan. The thing with being in Japan, sometimes I feel like I’m on another planet entirely, I feel like whatever happens in North America has low repercussions on me at this exact moment.

Yet, nothing could prepare me for the deep impact the death of George Floyd would have not only on me but on the entire world. While Japanese main media are mentioning the riots in-between other news, I’ve never seen so many Japanese celebrities and friends mention the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and truth to be told, I never expected them to do so. 

Japan has a lot of great things, diversity is not one of them. Even if the number of non-Japanese residing in Japan is going up, the Japanese mentality about diversity and inclusion is still at a start. 

The biggest reason for that is ignorance. Japan don’t often teach about things going on outside of Japan or even things happening in Japan.

As my horoscope app once told me, “Ignorance is a kind of violence” and I agree. By staying ignorant, you can hurt people so much more easily. 

Yet, at the same time, I found most people I’ve met in Japan, open to learning. I don’t know if it’s great luck that I have, but most times, when something discriminatory would happen, I could find ways to explain to my Japanese friends why it happen and most were receptive, they wanted to know.

And it what I am seeing right now. As the North American media are talking about racism and white privilege, a small part of Japan is watching via social media. They are translating for their peers who cannot speak English. They are learning.

This shows how a tragic event has a powerful impact on societies in the age of the internet and how important it is to talk about it. It is not because something is happening far from us that we cannot learn from it. 

It is not the first time a person of colour is being treated unfairly because of the colour of their skin, but we are screaming louder; enough is enough.

What Japan and other countries hopefully learn from it is, do not wait for death to change your way of thinking, the way of privileging a group to the detriment of another.

We already have a pandemic above ourselves, so many lives lost in illness, we need to understand that if we do not stand with one another, then we are all dead.

That is what is beautiful right now, how many people are standing together, all over the globe to say; “We are together, together as the human race”. 

Black Lives Matter. We should be scared of going out of our houses, of having fun, of breathing because of the colour of our skin. 

White people have to understand their privilege, how society was built to support them and destroy those pillars to create a society where the colour of skin doesn’t decide your starting point.

The domino effect, Trevor Noah mentioned in a video posted on May 30th, has started. But for once, I have hope. I have hope that those series of tragedies are the beginning of a better, brighter future, where black people won’t have to teach their children to be scared of the police. Where people, regardless of their skin, have equal chances given.

I have hope for a world where humans will work together.

So what can you do?

Talk about it.

Learn about it.

Vote for politicians that have human values and support those causes.

Do not stay stagnant and silent.

Be the change.

Every baby step will be worth a mile.

To do more: https://blacklivesmatter.com/

To know more: https://www.ted.com/playlists/250/talks_to_help_you_understand_r