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Continuing a June miniseries, we asked community members who took part in The News-Gazette’s ‘Being Black in America’ feature in 2020 and ’21 their opinions about whether enough has changed in the five years since George Floyd died at the hands of Minneapolis police. Here’s THE REV. SHANAE DOWELL, co-pastor at Danville’s 21st Century Christian Worship Center.

I really do not believe enough has shifted from the negative to the positive since May 25, 2020. One reason that we all can see is that the masses have not spoken up and let their voices be heard to affect the amount of change needed after a senseless crime such as George Floyd’s murder.

When I reflect back to the 1960s when I was a little girl, I can still hear the conversations of my parents talking about the hatred of people of different skin colors as the dogs were let go in the crowd while they marched for equality.

I remember children being blown up inside a church. I remember the death threats and racism our own family faced when we were the first people of color in our neighborhood. I remember a brick being thrown through my little brother’s window and landing in his bed, inches from his head. And I remember, that same night, a cross — on fire — being placed outside.

But the masses stood up for us. Our dad was at work as a chef on the Indiana state line, and we were home alone with our mother — just the four of us — when the neighbors rallied to our defense.

Fast-forward to the 21st century. If the masses would speak up and not hide behind their positions or their friends, we would see a great shift in America. This America would be one that others would want to be a part of and not shy away from — afraid of being sent back to a country where they weren’t born, children separated from parents.

No, nothing has changed. It has only gotten worse when people look at skin color and think “You do not belong here, so let’s get rid of you by any means necessary.”

We need peacemakers. We need to restore civil liberties and get to a place Martin Luther King Jr. described over 50 years ago, where it is not about the color of a person’s skin but the content of their character.

We cannot still believe it is all right for a group of officers to stand by and watch a Black man be choked to death for no reason — begging for help, begging for his mother, praying that he didn’t die while the entire world watched this senseless murder.

We will never change until the masses stand up against terrible cruelty and have a clear set of standards and an understanding that it is not all right to murder a Black man because he is Black — and he does matter.

It is not all right to snatch our children off the streets on their way to school.

And it is not all right to take us out of the history books, or take Black history out of the school libraries.