Fresh blood stains bright white. Black steel glints ominously and is unable to feel remorse for the child crying in the backseat. “Please Lord, don’t tell me he’s gone. Please officer, don’t tell me you just did this to him.” A hashtag is put in the place of action, and justification is absent where ignorance is present.

In this era of modern technology, where people can send texts across the world from their watches and simulate the ideal feeling of the future by riding hoverboards, it seems that the latest trend is to trivialize lives lost without a cause. It’s easy to dehumanize anyone when all you see and know of them comes from your computer screen, but the problem lies far beyond a few colored pixels.

The problem begins when those colored pixels turn into human beings. Those human beings, who happen to have an adaptation formed millions of years ago due to exposure to sunlight, are consistently and constantly oppressed by people in power who have grown up in the tradition of institutionalized racism. It’s an ongoing circle of hate and blame, and to have ignorance personified in those trying to lead the nation will only continue the wild goose chase of determining how to solve this problem.

Because this is a problem. Mass incarceration of a community is a problem. Though there are those that disagree and believe people of color are not the only ones being treated unfairly, they are the ones scared to leave their homes. They are the ones scared to get pulled over in fear of being shot or arrested without cause. They are the ones having to console their children at night when they wonder if their parents will return home from work.

Beyond Twitter videos taken on concealed cell phones, those people blatantly murdered without reason have families. They have lives. Steps are being taken in the right direction by not being silent about this obvious mistreatment, but no one deserves to be reduced to a hashtag.