What do you think of "Black Live Matters"?
Reply #2 - October 19, 2016, 11:15 AM
I'll chime in here, knowing I don't really have the time to dedicate to a worthy response.
One thing that I think many people fail to understand - including many non-black Americans - is that BLM did NOT begin because of recent police shootings.
We were ENSLAVED in this country for hundreds of years and literally considered to be subhuman. Our men were beaten, denied an education, and bred like cattle in order to produce the strongest offspring possible. Our women were repeatedly raped, abused, and forced to labor in houses and fields across the south for generations, and made to believe that servitude and being raped was life’s only purpose. Think the atrocities of ISIS on a systemic basis. This is not an exaggeration. (I myself am three quarters African and a quarter European. How do you think that happened?)
Many people go on to say, "Oh, that was a thing of history. It was a long time ago. Move on." What many don't seem to realize is that even when the humans who were forced into slavery were freed, they were not given civil rights, they were not empowered, they were not considered equals by their former masters. Instead, they were marginalized, dehumanized, and often persecuted in a systemic way by their former masters who resented the fact that the war was lost.
The best analogy I can think of right now is if all the abused migrant works in the Gulf States were suddenly told, “OK, you’re free. But you still don’t have any money, rights, or claims to citizenship. You still don’t speak our language like we do and we’re still never going to consider you as one of us. If you want to eat and survive, you have to go back to doing the same work you were doing before, under marginally better conditions. But sure, you’re free. Go be free.”
This went on for more than a hundred years, well into a time that our parents could very easily tell us about. It’s not just a matter of history. Our families, our parents and grandparents, were born and raised only miles away from the plantations our ancestors were forced to work. It is a very real and present reality that is quite separate from the American experience you guys might have seen on TV.
The Civil Rights movement did not come about because the South realized the error in its ways and decided to empower black people. It came about because strong-willed human beings (of both races) said "enough is enough" and began fighting the status quo. This battle was fought on multiple fronts, from the church to the courts to the streets. You’d better believe there was and still is resistance to this.
This came in the form of deliberate sabotage of any efforts that were made by blacks to gain real empowerment and self-sufficiency. These are not just words I am typing. There are real examples of this, including examples from the very city I grew up in myself. There are live examples today of places like Alabama where there are no black appellate judges and there is a deliberate effort to keep things that way. White supremacy is not just a phrase or a hashtag.
Just as our parents were able to tell us how bad things were back then, other parents are telling their kids how “great” things were back then, and now we hear those chants of “Make America Great Again.”
So, back to the issue of police shootings – this is not just some new phenomenon. We have known for generations that white men can kill black men with very good chances of not being held to account. Our history is full of examples of this. From Emmett Till to Travon Martin, believe me we know what the deal is. The message is loud and clear. And it doesn’t end at shooting. More of our men are imprisoned today than were enslaved generations ago, and that’s not because we’re somehow genetically more prone to violence or criminal behavior.
So, if you don’t understand what black people have been through in this country, that is completely comprehensible. You were never really meant to. Our stories were never really told in a way that only we could tell them. But what you are seeing right now is a generation looking to hold our society to account for the ideals and values we claim to represent. People are less afraid today. The systemic intimidation is not working the way it used to. Social media is spreading the word in a way that was never possible before. People are demanding real and actual change. It’s not new and it’s not over.
Topic: What do you think of "Black Live Matters"?