I am a middle aged white male. I have never had to look over my back whenever I have walked outside, even in a neighborhood I did not live in. I have never been particularly concerned for my safety when pulled over for an occasional traffic violation. I have never been frisked. I have never been asked what I am doing anywhere I have ever walked. I have never had to lecture my sons about how to act to the police if they get stopped, other than to tell them to be polite to everybody.
So I do not know what it is like to be the subject of ingrained institutional generational racism and bias against me or "my kind".
But I do know one thing:
Black Lives Matter.
You see? That was easy. All I had to do was put three words together.
Black..... Lives...... Matter.
I didn't have to add or subtract anything from it. I did not have to add a qualifier. There is nobody out there who can be hurt by my writing or uttering the phrase. It simply states the obvious. Nothing else.
Black Lives Matter.
If you cannot say it without adding "Blue Lives Matter" or "All Lives Matter", then quite frankly, black lives do not matter to you.
Because if black lives really did matter to you, you would not have to add anything to it. We all know that blue lives matter. We all know that all lives matter. Nobody seems to have any difficulty saying either without adding anything to it, especially "All Lives Matter", which is a just any overly simplistic way of saying "Can't we all get along?", and avoiding the real issue in the first place.
So just say it.
Black Lives Matter.
Pause for a moment. And then do not add anything to it. Do not tell me about any other kind of life that matters. Do not explain anything. It does not need an explanation.
And certainly do not tell me that George Floyd was no angel, as if he deserved what happened to him.
At that moment, whether or not George Floyd had done something terrible to anyone else any time in his life before having his breath squeezed out of him by Derrick Chauvin's knee while his three partners looked on and did nothing has no meaning at all, unless black lives do not matter to you, nor should it. I would highly doubt that while he sucked the life out of George Floyd, Derrick Chauvin was thinking of Mr. Floyd's "victims", whomever they were. He certainly was not thinking "all lives matter". As you watched the video for the first, second or third times, I would doubt you were thinking of George Floyd's supposed victims or that all lives matter either. All you were thinking was how horrible that was, and possibly that black lives do indeed matter. If you were not thinking, at the very least, that we witnessed barbarity at that moment, then I do not think I, nor anyone else, will ever be able to help you. If you thought well, all lives matter, not just this life, then black lives probably do not matter to you.
So we march. We paint signs. We dance around the streets. We yell slogans.
And then what?
If we go home satisfied that we have done our part and then do nothing else, then black lives do not matter to us either.
So vote.
So agitate.
If you see something that says black lives do not matter, point it out.
Do not stop. Force the change. Force those in charge to face the fact that black lives do matter, even if they have never owned up to the obvious in the past.
Do not shoot a jogger in your lily white neighborhood. Come to his aid if he is being harassed by a know nothing.
Intervene if a black man is being crushed under a knee.
Do not let them push over a black woman who is doing nothing but exercising a constitutional right to speak out against institutional violence perpetrated for generations against her and her family. Or sleeping in her own home for that matter.
Use that cellphone camera for all it is worth.
Press charges.
Make them stick.
Vote those out to whom black lives do not matter.
Do not buy or do business with those who do not believe black lives matter.
Vote.
Vote.
Vote.
Make them know, even if they do not want to hear it.
BLACK LIVES MATTER.
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