Let me speak to my fellow white people about the
Black Lives Matter movement…I was raised in a small town in Oregon where the
diverseness of our High School were the two Korean girls that were adopted, (I
had a crush on one of them). In the past, I’ve not been a progressive or a
liberal on most things. I have voted conservative most of my life. So please
listen to me when I say this.
There are a lot of white people missing the
point about the Black Lives Matter movement.
There are many of us spending a great deal of
time saying “All Lives Matter”, or “Blue Lives Matter” and generally racially
mansplaining to black people that it’s all in their heads and that police
brutality is not a real issue. This is quite possibly the worst way to approach
this.
Do this with me. Think back to the worst times
of your life. Were there ever times in your life when people did not take you
seriously? Were there ever times when people told you to settle down and quit
overreacting? Were there ever times where people told you that you had no right
to feel the way that you did? I don’t know about you, but those are some of the
darkest times in my life. Not only did it sting to be told I was wrong to feel
the way I did, it left me feeling alone, totally misunderstood and angry at the
world.
The question of whether blacks are being treated
differently by the police is very important, but just as important is the fact
that there is a large segment of our society that has a perception that they do
not belong; there are people in our country who do not trust the police to
protect them, and many of us are just saying they don’t know what they are
talking about and ignoring it.
The phrase “Black lives matter” is not stating
their lives are extra special, worth more than white lives or blue lives, but
it is crying out that they believe their lives are not being treated as equally
important as the rest of us. Responding with “All Lives Matter”, means we
totally don’t get it or worse yet, we believe everything is just fine and black
people are just blowing things out of proportion.
The “All Lives Matter” responses along with some
law enforcement agencies either not policing themselves or making incredibly
bad decisions in responding to the public outcry is what is leading to violence
from unbalanced people. When a group of people feel ignored and oppressed by
the people that should be protecting them, when hopelessness becomes entrenched
in your world outlook, how can it not eventually lead to violence?
If I as a blue eyed blonde haired big galoot of
a white man, who the last time I was pulled over for speeding received a
warning, woke up one morning to see media coverage of police shooting down
people that looked just like me, how would I react? If the months and years
went by and it became a normal thing to hear reports of people like me dying in
the streets, how would that affect me? I would be angry, nervous and spend my
day looking over my shoulder hoping I didn't catch the attention of law
enforcement. I'd be asking myself how I ended up in a country like this.
Many of us were raised with those ideals that
America is the land of the free and the home of the brave, that it was the best
country in the world where everyone was treated equal and you could be anything
you wanted to be through hard work and determination. Those ideals led many of
us to work hard and be productive members of society. If we had been raised to
not trust the government and to be careful because the police were not to be
trusted and could kill us, how would that affect us? If we saw things causing
us to believe that the system is not fair and that equality is a myth, how
would we respond?
The reason that many people respond with
"all lives matter" is because they still want to believe those ideals
even though there are things happening to our fellow citizens that are contrary
to the ideals of America. They want to ignore events that are contrary to their
dream of a just and free America. If we truly believed in that dream of a just
America, enforcing those beliefs is the best way to make it so. It is the way
that most resembles the founding of our country-resisting unfair treatment of
our countrymen. In this situation, we need to force our elected officials to
take it seriously when a large segment of society fears those who are supposed
to be protecting them.
Saying "Black Lives Matter", is as
patriotic as "We hold this truth to be self-evident that all men are
created equal..." It’s the same idea, only specifying one of the parties
of men that are equal to all of the others.
If we can't say that "Black Lives
Matter" without adding a “but” at the end, without some type of disclaimer
to it…we need to ask ourselves why.
