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Do Black Lives Matter?

Bill Tope

    Black Lives Matter— do they really? After all, what’s that actually supposed to mean, anyway? To me it means that, every Black man, woman and child is worthy of being—and as a person living in an allegedly free land, deserves and should demand to be—treated as a human being, with all the rights, liberties, freedoms and responsibilities attendant thereto.
    It doesn’t mean that only Black lives matter or that they matter any more—or any less—than any other ethnicity, creed, race, sexual orientation or religion. But they are deserving of the same respect, affection, and sanctity as any other individual, group or race. This is not zero-sum; it is, rather, a win/win proposition. If you assign positive attributes to one part of humanity, you are naturally more amenable to attributing the same positivity to other sectors of society.
    And let’s face it: African-American males of a certain age are historically viewed as more disposable and are hence more vulnerable to abuse—including murder— by law enforcement elements of the American urban scene. This is not to say that this is appropriate, but there it is. An inordinate number of felons are Black, but this is in part the result of the inordinate arrest, prosecution and conviction records against Black offenders; it becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some people think: Blacks are deeply in the depths of the criminal justice system—then that must be where they belong.
    Anyone who says that America is not a racist nation has not sat at a predominantly white breakfast counter or bar in a tavern or breakroom at a small business, discussing the day’s news. This is not to say that reverse-discrimination, a pernicious Black-on-white bias, does not exist It is justifiably called racism as well. In college, a Black man once told me that there was no such thing as black on white racism because the Black race was in no position to effectively compromise whites’ economic viability. My response: semantics; hate is hate. It certainly exists. And it should not be excused but rather should be combated as zealously as white-on-Black racism. People almost instinctively don’t like to be reminded of their foibles; recounting life’s inequities—and its iniquities—bothers some people more than it really should. But that’s their problem. To sum things up succinctly: BLACK LIVES DO IN FACT MATTER!

Story previous publication attribution is to The Telegraph newspaper in Alton, Illinois.

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