Black Lives Matter – Not So Much

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It hit me not long ago, as I listened to more than one television pundit say that the Black Lives Matter movement is a hate movement, specifically against, police officers, that they do not understand the concept of perhaps the most important word in the BLM moniker: “matter.”

The Black Lives Matter movement didn’t erupt after a police shooting of an unarmed black man. It erupted after a civilian, a vigilante in the person of George Zimmerman, stalked, shot and killed 17-year-old Trayon Martin, who was unarmed. The angst and anger of much of the black community rose as Zimmerman spun the tale that he was “in fear for his life,” though the only things Martin was carrying were a can of iced tea and a package of Skittles.

The anger continued to rise as the police and the community seemed not to care that Zimmerman had stalked Martin …though being advised to stop doing it by local police, and had confronted the young man, who I am sure was quite worried about this unknown person following him.

Zimmerman’s encounter with Martin ended up with Martin being shot dead and Zimmerman showing some minor injuries from their tussle. Martin had done what any person being followed at night would have done: he defended himself – and yet, nobody seemed to care. His life did not matter. His humanness – meaning, his drive to protect and defend himself against a man with a gun – did not matter. He was effectively blamed for his own death.

And then, to add insult to injury, the jury went with Zimmerman and he was acquitted of any wrongdoing.

That’s when all hell broke loose.

Yes, there have been lots of extrajudicial killings of black people by law enforcement. That has been a historical reality in this country, and black people have been wrestling with it for literally generations. There have been too many trials to mention where all-white juries have convicted a black person of a crime which the judge, jury and officers knew he or she probably had not committed. That, too, has been a part of the African American search for justice and full American citizenship in this country.

But the Black Lives Matter movement erupted because in spite of what was clearly a case of an armed wanna-be police officer stalking an unarmed black kid – because he “looked suspicious,” the killer got off. One more time, the killer got off.

Are there some in the Black Lives matter movement who say “kill the pigs?” Yes. But the bulk of the protesters in the streets are not calling for the murder of police. They are calling for the end of judicial injustice. Judicial injustice has said to black people for far too long that our lives have no value, and neither do our cries for justice.

I watch with interest as the rise in opioid addiction by white kids is getting more and more attention, with politicians and media and police doing all they can to save these kids from lives that will only go downhill if they do not shake their addictions. There was no such push to save the lives of black kids becoming addicted to crack cocaine. While white kids are being said to be suffering from the “sickness” of drug addiction, black kids were rounded up and thrown into jail for small amounts of marijuana. I watched with interest as Brock Turner was treated with compassion after having raped an unconscious woman, the court not wanting to ruin his life by giving him a lengthy – and appropriate sentence – for his crime. I watch lawmakers in Flint dancing around what they need to do in order to make water safe for little black kids who have been drinking lead-tainted water for some time now.

Black kids, suffering, do not matter. Their lives do not matter. Their futures do not matter.

That’s what the Black Lives Matter movement is about, as much as it is about getting rogue, racist, ultra-violent police off the streets.

Just thought I’d share a personal and very painful …candid observation.

When Nobody Cares About Your Tears

This is the day before Thanksgiving, and I can’t help thinking about the parents of slain children …whose Thanksgiving tables will be sprinkled with tears.

Some of us in this nation are wresting with the shooting death of LaQuan McDonald by a white police officer. I will not lift his name up; he seems not to deserve as much. The video released on LaQuan’s shooting has shaken me to my core. (http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/25/us/laquan-mcdonald-chicago-shooting-main/)

But I am resonating with the parents of LaQuan, as I have been resonating with the parents of all of the young, unarmed black people who have been shot and killed by police officers, mostly white, and who have not been held accountable.

I began mourning in earnest with these parents and family members when Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman. When Zimmerman was acquitted, I wept. Sybrina Fulton was a tower of grace and strength, but her heart as a mother had to have been in tatters. Mine was, and Trayvon was not my son.

With every death of black people by police officers, mostly white, where those officers have been let off, my tears have increased. I keep thinking of Rev. Martin Luther King’s sermon where he asked, “How long? Not long!” Dr. King said the arc of the universe was (is) long but it bends toward justice.

The arc is very, very long.

What is bothersome is that only the tears of some people seem to matter. The tears of the Parisians, in reaction to the terror attack, seem to matter, but the tears of the people in Beirut and Africa, where terrorist attacks also took place, the one in Beirut only the day before the Paris debacle, were not so covered.

It was like their tears…didn’t matter.

It seems that the tears of black and brown people really seem not to matter as much as do the tears of white people. It feels that way. A parent is a parent; a mother is a mother; a woman who carries a baby goes through the same painful labor no matter her race or ethnicity. Yet …only the tears of the white mothers, the white survivors of terror, seem to matter.

Is that the result of the dehumanization and criminalization of black and brown people? One woman on my Facebook page said it was natural that the coverage of the terror in Paris was as it has been because “those people are people with whom we share values.” Or some such …But her statement floored me. Isn’t the pain of human beings, all human beings, worthy of respect?

Today, the families of so many young black people are mourning, but I am not sure that their tears matter, and that is an issue.

What happens when nobody cares about your tears? Langston Hughes asked what happens to a dream, deferred? There are consequences. Painful and often explosive consequences.

A painful, candid observation

Tears of the Ignored

The coverage of the terror attacks which happened in Paris on November 13 has been exhaustive, to say the least. Even today, reporters from major news operations are still on the ground in the beloved city, talking about what happened, humanizing Parisians who are struggling with their grief, and talking about this phenomenon called ISIS. Reports of France bombing Syria as retaliation are coming in; the apparent slip in security of French and Belgian officials is being examined, and the world is, for all intents and purposes, totally involved in what is going on in France.

But the media is doing a disservice to the narrative of pain experienced by those who have been affected by ISIS, for while the reporters are humanizing Parisian victims, and in fact, all of Parisian society, it has blatantly ignored the attack by ISIS that took place in Beirut the day before Paris was hit.

In a separate story, observers have noted that when a college in Kenya was hit by ISIS in April of this year, the story received hardly a blip of coverage. (http://www.inquisitr.com/2565791/kenya-attack-that-left-147-dead-compared-to-paris-attack-news-coverage/) In that attack, 147 people died, and there were serious injuries.

Yet, the media seemed …and seems…not to care.

The question I am wrestling with this morning is why is it that the tears of people of color minimized? Why don’t our tears matter? I read a response of a person to the criticism of the lack of coverage in Beirut where he said, “It doesn’t matter. These things happen in that country every day.” Even if that is true, does it justify the media ignoring the pain and tears of the victims? Do their tears not count?

The lack of compassionate and objective reporting, favoring the pain of white people over that of people of color is striking. Ebola, for instance, has been a problem for years, yet it wasn’t until white people were infected that the story became big news. Drug addiction has been virtually cast aside as an issue that only affects poor, black people, a crime for which the addicts should be put away, but now that evidence shows that more and more white people are succumbing to drug addiction, and specifically, to heroin use, the reports read that drug addiction is an illness which should be treated.

When Trayvon Martin was killed, the tears and anguish of his parents was ignored. The same was true when Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Sam Dubose, Freddy Gray, Renisha McBride, Jordan Davis, Jonathan Ferrell …and so many others, were killed by police. None of these people were armed, and yet they were deemed to be threats to white society and were gunned down. No media really gave the parents of these victims the time of day. Their parents wept the tears of grieving parents, tears which come from a place too deep to even describe, and yet the media ignored them…this, while they show the tears of Parisians who were badly affected by the terrorist attacks in their city on November 13.

The media is failing. Media are supposed to be objective, and yet the media continues to push the narrative of the privileged, while leaving the people deemed to be second-class citizens to fend for themselves, and ignoring their pain. These second-class citizens are dehumanized; they are not seen nor are they heard. Black people, brown people, Muslims…are ignored, cast aside as dross. Yes, the lives of the Parisians who died matter …but so do the lives of these black and brown people matter, as do the lives of Muslims and Palestinians …and all others whom the privileged have cast aside.

There is a song I learned when I was a Girl Scout. It was about the sinking of the Titanic. The second verse went something like this:

We were nearing Greenland’s shores, when the water began to pour, and the rich refused to associate with the poor. So we put them down below, where the water was sure to go. It was sad when the great ship went down, down, down.

It was supposed to be fun song; we sang it on the bus on our way to summer camp, but even as a young girl, these words bothered me, so much so that after a while, I stopped singing it. There it was – the privileged taking it upon themselves to regard their pain and safety at the expense of the underprivileged. It was a testimony to how the privileged think.

I have two children. If either were killed, by police or in street violence, I would be devastated. The tears of black and brown people are bitter and salty just like the tears of white people, and come from the same place of pain. A mother’s grief is not less if she is black, brown, Muslim, Palestinian or a member of any other marginalized group.

I no longer expect the media to be objective. It is at the behest of the powers that be who pay their bills. The tears of the underprivileged, the oppressed, the second-class citizens …simply do not matter.

A candid observation ….

Obama and America’s Race Problem

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said last evening that the race problem in America has gotten worse since Barack Obama became president. He is echoing what many have said.

Even though I have some issues with some of what has and has not been done by our president as concerns race, I find myself wondering what people thought his being president was supposed to do. Right after he was elected, people, some who pride themselves on being really intelligent, gushed out that his election meant there was no more racism in this nation. America was “post racial,” they said.

There was a collective sigh of relief. Finally, people seemed to think, we could forget that racism is as much a part of America’s legacy as is its Constitution.

It hit me that America wants racism to just go away without being dealt with. So, I am guessing that when Mr. Obama was elected people thought we didn’t have to talk about “it” anymore. It was over. Americans, black and white, had crossed the Great Racial Divide, and all was well.

Except …it wasn’t. Racism is a disease, a disease which has never been openly dealt with. White people have been on the defense, proclaiming that they “are not racist” and daring anyone to make their truth any less than that. Black people have for the most part just wanted to fit in and be accepted, their race notwithstanding. Neither scenario has helped this nation come face to face with its sordid racist legacy.

I wonder what Christie and others thought was going to happen once Obama became president. The New Jersey governor said that Obama “gave us hope.” True, but as concerns racism, what was the expectation? That all of the pain and misery caused by racism would just fall into the sea? Did Christie and others think that those who grew up thinking and believing that black people were stupid and bad and inferior would somehow just …change their minds? Did they not anticipate that many people, including, it seems, the Congress, would be consumed by their racism and be driven by their resentment that a black man was in the White House? Did he and others not understand that for many people, Obama’s election was a slap in the face of what they believed America was called to be? That, for them, America was supposed to be a “white man’s country.” Obama’s election for many was almost a mortal sin. They wanted nothing but to see him fail. The Congress, Conservative talk radio, and other American institutions …seethed. They openly respected him. Members of Congress plotted to make him a one-term president. They hated that Obama was out of line, being the head of this nation.

Black people thought that things for them would vastly improve under Obama’s presidency; he was, after all, a black man. He would, of course, have their backs. But Mr. Obama was only the president. His movement as president was sharply controlled by the Congress, in spite of the fact that he managed to get the Affordable Care Act passed. The Congress was not going to tolerate him giving black people special treatment. He couldn’t even make the comment, after Trayvon Martin’s tragic murder, that “if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” How innocent a statement is that, and how true? Yet, he was attacked for being “racist” for expressing an honest evaluation of what it means to be black in America.

So, Gov. Christie and others, just how was Obama supposed to handle this issue of racism? Could it be that you think race matters are worse because Obama’s very presence in the White House rubbed the racist nerves of this country in the wrong way, making them come face to face with their prejudices and preconceptions about black people? With a white leader, those nerves are kept at bay, but a black man was just too much for those carrying racist ideologies to handle? Could that be the case? Obama has been pretty silent on the actions of rogue police officers that have resulted in the deaths of way too many black people during his administration, and yet Christie and others say he hasn’t had the backs of the police. Seriously? Much of the black community has been frustrated because he hasn’t said enough about what is going on …and yet, Christie and others think he has supported the black community at the expense of police officers? Something is wrong with Christie’s analysis.

I wish Christie and others would be specific. What would you have had Mr. Obama do? It’s not really sufficient for you to say that under his presidency race relations are worse. Why do you feel that way? Can you be more specific?

My guess is that they cannot. I think that America’s racist underbelly just has not been able to stand that a black man was the Commander in Chief of America. America is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave…white people.

A candid observation …

I wish someone would explain to me what his presidency would have looked like had

Before

Before Michael Brown, there were others.

Trayvon Martin, Roger Owensby. Timothy Thomas. Emmett Till. There were so many others.

The black community has been under assault by “law enforcement” for decades, and law enforcement has historically gotten away with it.

The Rev. C.T. Vivian, of whom I am writing an authorized biography, when I asked him how black people are to cope, not just with the murders of unarmed black people, but the lack of justice, and therefore of respect and dignity, said that we have to realize our strength, and realize that white people know that what we as a people suffer is brutal. (my word, “brutal,” not his.) He said, “Most white people realize that they could not live as black people do. They realize they would not be able to handle it.”

I relate to what is going on, and to what has always gone on with sanction in this nation, as a mother of a son. I have a daughter, too, but it is my son that I worry about, just because he is a black male. He does not do drugs. He does not have a criminal record. He knows “how to act” if stopped by police.

But none of that matters.

And that’s what scares me. Black people do not have to have a criminal record or be doing something wrong in order to be gunned down with abandon …by police. White officers and black officers have the same obsession with power, it looks like. They do not like to be challenged or questioned…and they know they have the upper hand. They too often shoot first and ask questions (or make up a story) later. No matter how compelling is the evidence that they are in the wrong, they get off.

That is scary.

The nation, this nation, cannot be “exceptional” so long as such barbarity within the ranks of law enforcement exists, because the actions of those who are supposed to serve and protect are causing a huge swath of parents and loved ones to suffer emotional pain that is ignored and minimized.

Black people have lived on the hope, the faith, that God will make a way …out of this madness caused by the dehumanization of them and their children. But God has been slow. Black parents stand weeping on the banks of “Red Seas,” holding out a metaphorical “rod,” waiting for the sea of injustice to part, but the parting has not happened yet, not after all these years.

The parents and loved ones of all of these unarmed black people are standing on the shore of that sea, waiting for God.

But God has been slow. It feels like God has been absent, actually.

It is horrible that police officers have been randomly killed, but here’s the difference between slain police officers and slain black people. Whomever has killed a police officer will be brought to justice. Most police officers who kill unarmed and many times, innocent black people, even if charged with a crime, will go free. There will be no justice.

That reality is the fuel of the Black Lives Matter movement. The lack of justice speaks to the core belief of this nation that black people do not matter, and never have. The lack of justice undermines the words of the United States Constitution, which black people and those concerned with justice latch onto, “All men are created equal.”

Not so. It wasn’t the case when the Constitution was drafted and it isn’t the case now.

I wonder if any of people who are so quick to blame black people for our lot in life ever stop to think about the effects of being dehumanized. I wonder if they feel it when black mothers cry, when little black kids are put in handcuffs for doing things little kids of all races have always done …because they’re little. I wonder if white mothers feel the pain of the mothers of Trayvon and Michael and Jordan and Roger and TImothy and Renisha and Sandra and Freddie and Sam…and so many. So many…

Please understand. Parents and loved ones feel the pain when black lives are taken by other black people…but the difference is that black people who kill other black people are usually brought to justice and end up in prison. It is small consolation but at least it represents justice.

The cry that some are trying to vilify and call representative of hate is a cry that is filled with anguish about being used, exploited, and then being discarded. American society uses black people (and poor people) for cheap labor, exploits the, unwilling to give them decent wages so they can take care of their families, and then discarding them when they cry out for help as their loved ones are mowed down by state-sanctioned actions of law enforcement officers.

Law enforcement doesn’t care about black lives. The education system doesn’t care about black lives (schools for black children are the worst of all schools). America doesn’t care …about black lives.

Before Michael Brown there were others, so many others…

And we live in a nation that just does not care.

A candid observation