Black Lives Matter to white people

My two-block street is lined with white people, one brown person, one person of Asian decent, and one bi-racial person. More than half of the houses have BLM signs in our yards, the most recent addition being a hand-crafted, wooden sign made by the home renter. 

At first glance, maybe this practice is farcical. As a white person with a BLM sign in my yard, I maintain the practice is important. The reason our society needs this message is because black lives haven’t mattered from the early days of our country. 

The global pandemic has forced white people to slow down enough to say, we are outraged, too, and see the horrific treatment at the hands of law enforcement and the criminal justice system black people often receive. 

I can say unequivocally that all of the citizens of my street vote. We write to our representatives and legislators. We speak out and speak up in person and online against social injustice. We read relevant literature and factual news. Beyond those actions, I don’t know what we do to change the system or progress the cause.

I suppose this is the problem addressed in some of that literature that white people don’t know what to “do,” me at the forefront of that painful paralysis. 

I don’t have a summative message that addresses this crisis, and I don’t know that there is one. It’s complex, woven into the fabric of spoken and unspoken, written and unwritten, policies and laws at every level of government. I acknowledge the exhaustion the black lives that have not mattered experience, and I say, put me to work. I’m educating myself, and I’m open to direction. I don’t think that’s enough or that I can sit on my privileged laurels. At the same time, wallowing in despair doesn’t do anyone any good no matter the color of their skin. 

Hilarious and horrifying

Sam Stone John Prine

No more switching back and forth from DST to Standard Time!

Constitutional Blasphemy

Black History Month

Humans with the darkest skin have been systematically disenfranchised, first by each other, enslaving themselves and saving themselves through often desperate measures.  Black people, enslaved by white people, facing constant and horrific brutality, being murdered without legal consequence, beginning approximately 3000 years ago, continue to face these tragedies today. People of color have been omitted from, or at most, given an insignificant place in classroom history textbooks, e.g., an aside separated from the main text of the book, as if to say, well, there was one person of color who happened to do something of great historical significance, and aren’t we white, male historians magnanimous for including them in our book. But of course, this is not the main or most important part of history one should know about. 

My ultimate point is to say, someday we will not need a Black History Month, a Women’s History Month, an Hispanic Heritage History Month, etc, because all humans who have made a significant contribution to the evolution of society will be written into the body of classroom textbooks.

Until then, Black History Month (the shortest month of the year, which my mind turns into a subtle stab in the back with a wink to the white people who came up with the idea) is where we all learn about people with the blackest skin, the “other gender,” and those with a different ethnic ancestry, what their very significant contributions to humanity. This case is one of those. 

https://www.history.com/.amp/news/smallpox-vaccine-onesimus-slave-cotton-mather