Forever etched in my mind are photographs of two separate unarmed black children shot to death, within seconds of the arrival on the scene of uniformed police officers, as if the children were mere cockroaches to be stepped on as vermin.
As I see it, forming a "Black Lives Matter" movement is a a cry of anguish from the black community. I can fully understand that when whites say that all lives matter, blacks feel as if their pain, inflicted by servants of an almost all white society, is being trivialized. The pain is further exacerbated by somehow justifying, or otherwise mitigating offenses, by uniformed agents of our society, by black on black murder.
"If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that."
ReplyDeleteThere is a reason that the movement is called Black Lives Matter and not All Lives Matter. Although all lives do matter, the black group is the main one being marginalized by corrupt policing (targeting of blacks in a prejudicial manner), and legal and justice system (lack of good legal representation in court and harsher bonds, sentencing, and parole measures). Racial prejudice, for whites and against blacks, has immense cultural, economic, educational, job, and work-related effects. It's a systemic problem throughout our society that disproportionately effects blacks. The effect for whites is quite the opposite. The movement is called Black Lives Matter because currently, in our society, they don't.
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