When a peaceful protest in Dallas was interrupted by gunfire last week, many people in the area ran in fear for their lies. A man named Kellon Nixon, 34, details in an interview with MSNBC what it was like in the midst of it all.

When asked about his overall feelings about the event, Nixon expressed disappointment.

“I hate that this is what actually will be remembered,” Nixon said. “That the worst of people will give us a perception of our people.”

He explained that, during the shooting, he had to reflect on the safety of himself and his 5-year-old son who he brought along with him to the march.

“You start to think it’s me against the world. And with that type of mentality, we’ll implode as a people,” he said. “We’ll implode not as ethnicity as a people, but as a people, period. We’re all one race at the end of the day. If we get a ‘me against the world’ mentality ― last night I was thinking, maybe it’s not black lives matter or all lives matter, maybe it’s just my life matters. Maybe it’s just my family’s life matters. I had to recover from that spiritually.”

Finally, Nixon connected the issues of police violence and institutional racism to the United States economy.

“But I think that the best thing we can do is to value lives over the economy,” he said. “I think that’s one of our biggest problems in America is that the economy is stronger than our moral fiber. Our desire for prosperity is so much greater than our desire to be moral, to be humane, to love, to care, that we’ll risk our children, we’ll risk the sanctity of marriage or anything just for money. Just to stay on top as a nation. What we don’t understand, I think, is that when we lose our heart, when we lose our souls, we’re really the bottom, we’re really the worst of people no matter how materially rich we are.”

In the end, the interview shows that there are varying views of last week’s events. And, if we only give people the opportunity to express those views, we might have a better understand of how to address the racial problems facing this country.

 

Photo: MSNBC screenshot