Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Black Lives Matter

If you are of the "No, all lives matter" persuasion, please explain to me how the "No" to the group of people shouting, "We feel unsafe, please stop killing us" is not circular logic.

Beyond that, tell me what you know about living a life like that, how you empathize, and how you might personally respond to feeling like you are living under constant threat.

Please, show me when you've lived under such conditions, under constant mental awareness of the possibility of death, abuse, rape, or other harm... tell me when you last felt you had to be cautious of other races, sexes, or sexual orientations - or hyper conscious of your own - not simply for fear of the random group of bigots, but even more for fear of defining yourself on the terms of a world that pretends not to see you, and takes great pride in that. And then tell me your experience of having the caution, reservedness, or boldness you've developed to cope in that world be used to accuse YOU of being racist, or sexist, or intolerant yourself.

Tell me about the last time you felt utterly reliant on an authority that was mostly comprised of a group of people that don't and can't understand your struggles, and then tell me how you reacted when you felt that authority was consistently abused, with a growing death toll.

Tell me how you reacted when you tried to voice your worry that you and people like you need to matter, and it was met with "No, all lives matter."

Tell me all about your experience with these things, and then tell me racism, sexism, and other forms of latent prejudice, intolerance, and hatred are not a problem anymore in the United States of America.


I wrote this with both some anger, and then some worry over being viewed as presumptuous.

But the main progress I've seen in my life is people coming to terms with the fact that things like homophobia and transphobia are wrong. I feel homophobic cop would be persecuted by so many more people. And most people would now agree that a homophobic cop probably shouldn't be a cop.

And that is because people realize that hate is born out of fear, even if that hate is unintentional and buried. Maybe if we started calling racism "racial-phobia", people would realize exactly what is going on. Yes, LGBTQ-R-STUVWXY and Z.