Thrishantha

I am a Roboticist at Imperial College London with Sri Lankan origin. I am writing this on 9 th June 2020 with so much sadness about the death of George Floyd under police custody in broad daylight symbolising a general pattern of brutality against Black People. I am not generally categorised to be Black, but being South Asian, I may have few things to share with fellow Black academics. I must confess that I learnt about Black history in the past two weeks than I did in my whole life despite having lived in Baltimore when I was at Johns Hopkins University. Baltimore was a vivid example of how African-American communities are victimized from multiple fronts from within and outside their communities. If one walks just 200 meters from where the School of Medicine of Johns Hopkins is located, one could imagine what it would mean to grow up as a child in those neighborhoods. Schools in those areas are traditionally under-funded and going to school is not just waking up,