IF All Lives Matter
IF All Lives Matter, where is your outrage when unarmed black men are being murdered by the very people sworn to protect All Lives? Where is your outrage when a Mosque is burned to the ground? Children are being separated from their parents and locked in cages like animals? People brutally assaulted and murdered simply for who they love? African American churches are shot up, bombed, and burnt to the ground?
Yesterday morning amidst the incoming reports of protests turned violent, I asked how calling the police on looters was the same as calling the police on protesters. My white privilege was quickly checked at the door and a fellow tweeter proceeded to point me in the direction of a self-education, stating clearly it wasn’t her job to hold my hand through understanding it.
She was right.
My ignorance stemmed from the inability to understand many of the realities people of color live with every single day. I can’t imagine what it’s like, and I never will. I was unaware that many of the vandals, arsonists and looters were groups of white people directly linked to white supremacy organizations[1] that travel to peaceful protests for the sole purpose of inciting violence and creating a chaotic atmosphere in the hopes of having black and brown people blamed and murdered.
I had not considered that deployed officers would presume the culprits were African Americans and many innocent lives would be in danger, simply for being in the area. I didn’t fully grasp the fact that a peaceful protest being met with violence by law enforcement is the blatant truth of American history. It’s easy to sit behind our locked doors and keyboards proclaiming the protesters and the rioters are one in the same.
It’s acceptable for us to dismiss the truths and realities of ‘peaceful assembly’ in this country, pretending that its always been a calm gathering of like-minded people expressing their constitutional rights. After all, don’t we cling to our Constitution as the almighty declaration of freedom and proof that all men are created equal? Except when they aren’t. Which has been always.
I have watched my social media feeds kick into overdrive with mass proclamations that only African Americans loot, vandalize, and burn down businesses and homes when they protest an injustice. It is a glaring example of how little whites really know about history or racism.
99 years ago, on this very day in 1921 the Tulsa Race Massacre began. By its end, a day later, more than 35 square blocks of the Greenwood District in Tulsa Oklahoma were destroyed. Private aircraft dropped bombs on what was referred to as ‘The Black Wall Street’, and ground attacks were in mass. Whites set about shooting black residents on the spot, looting and vandalizing the numerous upscale businesses and homes taking whatever they wanted before burning it all to the ground.
The National Guard was deployed to participate in the mass arrest of all Greenwood residents leading to over 6 thousand African Americans being held for up to 8 days, yet none of the white terrorists were detained, nor charged[2]. Not one of the many criminal acts of that massacre led to the charge, arrest and punishment of a single white person involved.
The deaths of unarmed African Americans by police officers too often leads to zero arrests, zero charges and zero justice. This is not a new problem this is America’s legacy. Many point the finger at the President for the current racially divided climate. His rhetoric and explosive tweets boldly incite violence, certainly, but he did not invent racism. Racism is as much a part of American History as the Constitution itself.
While the president has busted open the gate in broad daylight for hatred to spread, the racial divide has not grown, it is merely being seen. Citizens armed with cell phones are shining a light on an issue that has long been ignored. Technology has stood as a mirror in front of each of us, holding truth in its grasp as we act and react. If you are not outraged by injustice toward any man, your proclamations of ‘all lives matter’ land in the ever-growing pile of ‘things racists say.’
Holding that all lives do indeed matter, we must offer more than our words. We must stand alongside those being persecuted and uplift the voices of the oppressed. Allowing for the victims to be heard and protecting their families as we would our own. We must equally demand consequences for those who would attack and murder an unarmed citizen, regardless of race. It’s imperative that we equally demand change to a system designed to deliver justice disproportionately among races.
IF All Lives Matter, our actions would reflect it.
[1] https://www.courthousenews.com/minnesota-officials-link-arrested-looters-to-white-supremacist-groups/
[2] https://www.tulsahistory.org/exhibit/1921-tulsa-race-massacre/#flexible-content
