The killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner and far too many more Black people show in stark reality what our community members who are people of color know all too well - that structural, systemic racism is still poisoning our country.  

We see so many Black children and youth at Covenant House who have lived in the ugly shadow of racism. They deserve unconditional love and absolute respect but instead have faced discrimination and rejection. We see the scars of racism and prejudice against Black lives show up as poverty, homelessness and human trafficking time and time again.  Young people who identify as Latino/a/x are 33% more likely to experience homelessness, while young people who are African-American are 83% more likely.  By age 18, 53% of black children in the United States will have their parents investigated by child welfare. And nearly 1/4 of the foster kids in 2016 were black, though African-Americans are 13% of the population. If we don’t see the role race plays in this system, we are not paying attention.

On top of all of this, communities of color, especially the Black community, were already facing, and disproportionately dying from, the greatest global pandemic in a century.

As a community dedicated to serving young people and each other with absolute respect and unconditional love, we know there is more we can and must do.  The brave young people building their lives at Covenant House deserve to live in safety and with hope, as do our colleagues of Color who face persistent racism. Let’s lift our voices and take action together to confront and dismantle racism and violence and build the world our kids deserve.