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.