I’ve written many words these past several weeks. Some about division, some about resolution, others about a world where we let others live and not rock the boat because it’s not worth the battle of arguing over science and opinion.
This week I’ve struggled with a lot of things, and none of them question whether or not this battle our country fights today is worth it.
Without doubt, it is.
My struggle is with the hatred I see. From people I know. People I respect. People I want to educate yet know they won’t change. They might not see this new world where we all live. The terms we, those of us living inside this particular struggle, must come to is making this battle worth fighting, making the education of those we love a priority. We might not change the world. We may never change the thoughts of others. But, it’s worth the try, worth the open conversation, and worth the tears we all shed as we open ourselves to a vulnerability still unlike that of our community members, our friends, our lovers, and our family whose skin is black.
Black Lives Matter
Look, there is a lot to say on this topic alone. I can’t cover it all in one blog, but we start open dialogue somewhere, right?
Black Lives Matter
This organization was started by a black lesbian in 2013 after Trayvon Martin’s murderer was acquitted. Alicia Garza, along with a few others, shared the words BlackLivesMatter on social media with a hashtag that spread like wildfire.
There was no ill intent in those words.
Those words are filled with love, with compassion, and with the hope that men, women, fathers, mothers, grandparents, sisters of young black men, and children growing up black in white America would hold on to their faith and optimism with the knowledge of a failed system time and again, that they still matter.
This failed system has oppressed black America for hundreds of years.
Don’t try, you will fail too. Do not try to argue how slavery ended over hundred years ago and those choices of white ancestors are not the choices of our generations. Do not come at me with voting rights, how far we’ve come, and the Civil Rights movement from more than fifty years ago because if we were truly fifty years ahead of Martin Luther King, Jr., we would not be protesting today.
Today, we are in Selma only with better technology, a larger acceptable vocabulary, more media, and viral content.
Speaking of content, take a look at this video of Alicia Garza in 2017 giving a commencement speech at SFSU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VemmBIKWyhE
“Were it not for black women, there would be no Underground Railroad, no one to campaign against black bodies swinging from trees like strange fruit, there would be no protest songs like the ones that came from the toes, through the womb up, through the lungs and out of the brilliant mind and mouth of Nina Simone. There would be no black women voting like the 96 percent of us who did vote and said hell no to this administration. There would be no America were it not for black women. This is an ode to black women – because black women are magic. ” — Alicia Garza
Did you know Alicia Garza has a new group? This one is for women. Let me share a few things about these two groups in random order:
- Committed to building for the long term…
- Affirm the lives of […] queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all […] lives along the gender spectrum…
- Inclusive and engaged membership community…
- Affirm our humanity…
- Training and mobilizing our community to show up at the polls…
- …Expansive. We are a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement.
What about any of those points scare you? Any of them?
Is equality scary?
Gender equality?
Race equality?
For me, for my children, I like those goals shared above.
By the way, if you must know, bullet points one, three, and five are all from Alicia Garza’s group Supermajority. Bullet points, two, four, and six are from Garza’s Black Lives Matters. The […] I left out on purpose. Those words were the word ‘black.’ So, black queer folks and black lives.
https://supermajority.com/our-roadmap/
I’m honored to be with people who want to affirm humanity. I believe in inclusive movements.
I don’t understand why the BLM movement is so completely misunderstood. Except, I think I do know why. I see misinformation all the time.
Here’s what matters – straight from BlackLivesMatter
https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-matters-2020/
They matter.
Black Lives Matter.
Before I get to misinformation, let me share what #BlackLivesMatter does not mean.
It does not mean:
– other lives do not matter
– murders of white people should go unnoticed
– anything else those who don’t understand share at viral rates
This is NOT the time to speak against this movement.
You see, us white people, our voices are heard more than others day after day, year after year.
White people hold more higher positions in careers, in politics, in creation positions. White people are recognized more on media sites, and because we live in a world unequal and unjust, white people in the same positions are all too often paid more and recognized more.
Black Lives Matter because their lives are at risk much more than any other American life on our own soil.
– Is there black on black crime?
Yes.
They know that, and they do not deny it’s a problem. They can’t even begin to focus on solving that problem until their lives matter when they are not criminal, when their young men are jogging, when they are given due process for whatever crimes our white cops think they may have committed, when they are not followed in a store the moment they walk inside.
Also, let’s not forget the white criminals not mentioned any time someone comes up with this black on black crime as an argument to ignore the fact that these American lives, Black Lives, Matter.
I’m not going to name them here but think of five or even ten American crimes that come to mind. How many are black Americans?
– Serial killers – one study showed over 52% are white men.
– Zealous religious killers or cult leaders who take their followers, most often their teen wives and multi-generational children to heaven – white men.
Let’s move on… and forget the argument of crime. No race is perfect, so if crime will forever be your argument, please practice citing numbers and facts of white crimes to match.
– Are many black communities ridden with drug issues?
Yes
I’m not going to waste your time here citing facts, but I will say do your research before using this as an argument.
Here’s our nation’s truth:
The percentage of black vs. white drug use and drug sales ranks pretty close. However, the chances of black incarceration for drug sales and drug use is much higher than that of white Americans.
Racism in the system much?
Read that again. About the same number of white people use and sell drugs as black people, yet, and here’s the statistic from the evidence-based initiative, The Hamilton Project, it’s 6.5 times more likely black dealers and users will be incarcerated over their white counterparts.
Black Lives Matter
We are on day three on what is known as Pride Month in my community of LGBTQ+ people of all color and all races and all cultures. We get thirty days to reflect on our lives, how far we’ve come, and celebrate who we are along with our freedoms.
We don’t have all the freedoms straight people have.
Don’t bother to reply with our right to marry for five years now. Five years is a blip on our freedom clock. Trust me. Homosexuality isn’t new. Gay marriage is. Besides, I’ll come back with parenting rights, birth certificate language, and simple tasks you may take for granted like doctor and school pickup rights or the amount of time it takes to get through a court system to adopt because laws won’t allow two people of the same gender on birth certificates at the time of birth. Let that sink in for a moment. If a woman dies giving birth to her biological child, her legal spouse, her wife, may not have rights to their child.
This isn’t about Pride Month though. We are still fighting, and we are winning, so I’m asking my fellow LGBTQ+ friends to rise up and stand with those who stood with us when we had no one.
I’m too young for memories of Stonewall Inn and the Stonewall riots of 1969, but I know them well, and I’ve known them for decades. I’ve walked in parades before we had rights, in times when we feared being seen at such an event because we could potentially lose our jobs or be outed in ways we were not prepared to face.
What I do remember about the Stonewall Riots is this:
- Gay rights didn’t start with Stonewall.
- They didn’t end with Stonewall as we are still fighting today.
- The decades before the Stonewall arrests and riots meant homosexuality was criminal. That’s right, being exactly who they were – people – was criminal.
- The six days of riots that followed the Stonewall raid forced change in our community and in our country.
- An unexpected coalition came to the aid of the gay and trans community, The Black Panthers.
By 1969, the FBI was after The Black Panthers which started as a movement not unlike BLM today. Agree or not, The Black Panthers started as a protection organization in 1966. Their goals were to end police brutality, assist with equal housing opportunities, and find employment for black men and women in poorer areas. Over time, their movement expanded to several issues including the fight alongside white people who protested the Vietnam war. With even more time, their government saw the organization as a threat, much like many white people see Black Lives Matters today as a threat.
You see, actions for civil rights had taken effect by 1966. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954 ended segregation, only it didn’t. It did declare segregation in schools unjust and unequal in the eyes of the law. This, in 1954, one hundred and seventy eight years after the words, “All men are created equal” were written on our country’s personal bible or set rules by slave owners who didn’t see anyone outside of a wig of silver rolls and spectacles as people but rather property; this in 1954, eighty-nine years after slavery died on our nation’s soil and free men traveled away from plantations to make something of themselves and eighty-six years after due process laws and equal protections became a hot topic among black rights; this, in 1954, eighty-four years after black men earned the right to vote since they were now considered a people. Near the turn of the century, long before Rosa Parks, a man named Plessy took his rights to the high courts and lost, his country who’d granted him equal rights under the law questioning the men before them who’d deemed such a thing as equal with these words:
“The object of the [Fourteenth] amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to endorse social, as distinguished from political, equality. . . If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.”
In our country, we have defined and redefined the term equal as it fits the minds of white men writing or upholding our laws for decades.
Jim Crow laws were enacted as white men saw fit within their cities and states to define the term equal as they determined their forefathers meant the word to be.
Every establishment or municipality must provide equality to both whites and blacks. That means, equal, right?
But did it? White soda fountain seats. White water fountains. No blacks allowed. Water fountains were provided to black people and seats in public spaces including buses. But was providing actually creating equality? Hell no.
Have you seen the movie Hidden Figures? The screenplay was written by Allison Schroeder and Theodore Melfi and based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly. I’m not going to get into what scenes are true moment by moment and which are implied or more cinematic than actuality because none of it matters. The overall story is real. And the take I want you to see is that the white men of NASA were willing to take credit for the work of incredibly smart black women. Black women who had to go to a different building to pee, if we believe the cinematic piece of the story, in the rain a half a mile away from the space where they worked without benefit of a toilet down the hall or readily available coffee as their peers had.
This, in the eyes of white America fifty to sixty years ago, was equal. This was equal? This was white driven equality. Not equal in any way, shape, or form. Yet, it was accepted as equal. It was Jim Crow equal.
My apologies, I was talking about the Black Panthers and turned down the road of why did The Black Panthers matter or need to exist. I hope you can understand why a movement for civil rights was necessary. Fountains, education, seats on buses and trains, and access to bathrooms — what a great segue into right to use a toilet today, but I don’t derail here because this is about Black Lives Matter, and I’ll share some transgender statistics later.
Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panthers wanted equal to mean equal. That meant, he wanted all men to be created equal. He wanted all men to have equal opportunities. Equal treatment for the same crime. Equal judgment and prosecution.
Pause. Did George Floyd receive that in 2020? Was Mr. Floyd given a chance to stand in front of a judge, a jury, an investigator, an attorney?
No. George Floyd was murdered.
So, those issues Huey P. Newton wanted in 1966 are still not gifted to our black Americans today. In 2020.
Huey P. Newton stood up after the Stonewall Riots and shared his thoughts of the oppression of homosexual men and women. He expressed his own insecurities as a man and the potential threat homosexuality might bring to straight men who achieve their manhood through their own personal sexuality. Among other things, he said this:
Remember, we have not established a revolutionary value system; we are only in the process of establishing it. I do not remember our ever constituting any value that said that a revolutionary must say offensive things towards homosexuals, or that a revolutionary should make sure that women do not speak out about their own particular kind of oppression. As a matter of fact, it is just the opposite: we say that we recognize the women’s right to be free. We have not said much about the homosexual at all, but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real thing. And I know through reading, and through my life experience and observations that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. They might be the most oppressed people in the society.
When no one stood by the gay and trans people at Stonewall Inn, the place where they felt safest, The Black Panthers stood with them, even with admittance of their own lack of complete understanding.
Yes, the government tried to bring down the Black Panthers. Yes, these were volatile times in many ways, and yes, glossing over all of that doesn’t make it go away. Underneath the history of The Black Panthers lies their truth. Education, equality, housing, salary, rights, the right to bear arms, and freedom from police brutality for people of color that white folks never had to face.
Challenge me on communism, crimes, and a radical agenda of The Black Panthers, and for every one you bring to me, I can show you a burning cross, white men covered in white hoods, black churches burning, and every single brutal arrest Jim Clark and his white men with cattle prods made in the name of white America and fuck the laws of equality. Want to take it further? I’m happy to introduce to you to “Bull” Connor, his klansmen, and his lack of protections as a public official charged with serving the people of his community for at least six terms.
Black Lives Matter
Welcome to my generation. I grew up in a middle Atlantic town that I would say was about 50/50 black to white. Craig, Darnell, Stacey, Stacy, Anthony, Condee, Angel, Sonia, Derek, Sean, Buck, Thomas… I could keep naming names of classmates who I remember as beautiful black people, but I’ll stop there because they are just that to you – names of beautiful black people.
Growing up for me never meant race issues. We studied all that had happened to their grandparents, but as a white girl, I shook my head and carried on. I didn’t grow up in a house where I was taught to act differently if necessary or to remember my lack of privilege or to know and understand how I will be treated differently. I guarantee those beautiful people I listed above heard those talks in their homes. I also bet today they talk to their children as they’ve been taught generation after generation about who they are and how the world, no our country, might treat them.
White parents, you better be talking to your children today. Teach them right from wrong. Teach them humanity. Teach them to stand with their brothers and sisters of color as they would one another. Teach them kindness and how to spread it like wildfire.
Here’s our problem, white America. We were taught it was history. We were taught it was all swept under the rug. We were in desegregated schools. We grew up together. We were friends. Maybe not as close as we would have liked; maybe there were barriers I didn’t see. Unwritten rules. I still get leaky eyes when I think of Stacey Bagby and how much I adored her for so long – and still do.
Black Lives Matter
Because we left them behind. Somewhere between Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and the riots that changed civil rights putting action into law and me becoming an adult, we, white people, buried our past. Generations died or retired. Jim Clark died this century. I have a racist in my own family who is still alive. I have refused to speak to this person for many years. I have spoken out against this family member. But, even with that, we bury it.
Think. Have you buried it? Your past? The time you listened to someone whisper the word black as if it was a bad thing to say. The judgment about hair, color, or assumption of behavior based purely on prejudice passed down from your family or heritage?
Black people have buried nothing except their own people. For centuries. They can’t move on as we have because their freedoms, the ones they have fought for since the dawn of time, and especially here in our country, do not exist.
It wasn’t until I was a young adult that I saw racism for what it was. As CNN wrapped up images of war, they aired the new race war with the Rodney King beating. The riots. The looting.
It was the first time we talked about race as a nation in my lifetime, especially with current events. Everything before Rodney King was history. Even Rodney King was buried after some time. He was eventually buried for real with a tainted image of drugs and alcohol. Did white America do that to him? Is that really how we should remember him? Can we keep the images of those moments in our minds and hearts forever to keep the memory of Rodney King alive and fighting for justice?
It’s no different than what we’ve heard about George Floyd. I’m not going to add to the unjust cruelties said about a man who was asphyxiated by a police officer because they do not matter. His life mattered. His path to justice mattered. His black daughter mattered. His family mattered. Those are the things we’ll focus on from here, not his flaws because if we name them, we need to name ours too and weigh our flaws against our murders, only for now at least, we are still here.
Black Lives Matter
Until white people no longer whisper the word black, until young black men are no longer followed in stores for fear of theft, until white people start to actively listen, there will be no change.
How long ago did Colin Kaepernick start kneeling? In 2016? Almost four years now.
Here’s a white person being humble. Me.
I didn’t understand it.
I actually thought it was a rule to stand during the national anthem. I also thought it was tradition.
I asked. I educated. I messaged one of those beautiful black men I named above and asked for him to educate me in the year of 2016 on why it mattered so much to break this ‘rule’ or this ‘tradition.’
I didn’t pass judgment until I had the facts.
It still took me a few days. I researched the hell out of everything Condee told me until I had my answer.
And I would be happy to kneel with Kaepernick and any other black person today.
Do you understand the issues? Do you see the history of oppression? Can you begin to understand the white rebuttals of lore do not stand? Can you see black?
They kneeled.
White America complained.
White America still oppressed.
White America still killed them.
What will it take before Black Lives Matter to you?
Black Lives Matter
Let’s talk facts about today.
Most protests are peaceful.
Looters and rioters are not the norm, nor are they the people protesting.
Looters and rioters are lawbreakers. They are angry. Some are oppressed as well. Some are white America.
Read that again. Some of the looters are white.
If you must share the painful part of this process our country is going through, please remember people are inherently flawed.
People take advantage of others all the time. Some are white, some are black. Some want to cause strife and wag the dog to get the attention of those who will spread their hatred like wildfire.
Riots are a part of America’s rich history.
Riots don’t always show a long-term positive impact on the communities where rioting occurs. With that said, riots occurred after a white man murdered a peaceful protestor in the name of white hate in 1968. Chicago’s westside burned. Over $27 million in damages were reported in Washington DC. All across America, our black communities who had spent countless hours and months trekking streets following peace in protest for their freedoms set out to be heard.
And heard they were. President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 during those riots. This act was a long time coming and included issues outside of race relations, but the point is, black lives spoke loudly, and we (I wasn’t alive then, so this is a collective we) listened.
Listen today.
Yes, people.
If you are white, you are probably not at risk right now. You could get pulled over and not question your life’s value. Hell, you may even get out of a ticket if you’re savvy enough.
You could probably go for a jog in your neighborhood without worry.
You probably go into stores without being followed by employees who don’t trust you because of your skin color.
If you were to be arrested, it probably wouldn’t include a knee to your carotid artery.
Black Lives Matter
Because they are at risk right now.
Because they haven’t been seen.
Because white America buried our past while they’ve lived in theirs over and over again.
There are many things you can do to help show support instead of burying again. I won’t name them all, but here are a few.
- Do not say other things to battle the phrase Black Lives Matter. This term is not a threat to you.
Let me address this separately because we see it all the time. Blue lives, all lives… your reply, if this is how you respond to the Black Lives Matter movement negates any empathy you have for our black people of America who are hurting right now.
Think about it this way. In our narcissist society, we are more aware every day of people replying to our pain with some comment about themselves or what matters to them.
Have you ever had a bad day, tried to talk to someone about it only for them to reply with how their day is worse? Life is not a competition. You went to your tribe to seek support and they left you with their problems which in essence negated your own.
If you said you lost a loved one to cancer and asked someone to donate to hospice or a cancer research fund in your loved one’s name rather than give flowers at a funeral service, would the people in your world reply with diabetes matters, heart disease matters? And if instead, they donated to a heart foundation instead of a cancer fund, do you think you’d remain silent – to everyone? What if it happened every time you reached out, over and over?
I’ve seen this analogy lately, and it speaks a lot of truth and actually reminds me of the movie Volcano when the lava gets to the Watts area of Los Angeles but the police don’t protect the area or try to save the black families who live there until a black man who had been helping called them out on their choices of who and what to save and who and what to ignore.
If your neighbor’s house was on fire and firefighters were spraying it down, would you yell at them to wet down your house and the five houses down the street because all houses matter? Which one is at the most risk in the moment? The one on fire.
Ladies and gentlemen, black America is on fire. They do not say nothing else matters, so please for the love of all that is good, let them know they matter by not making this movement about you or anyone else. Your house is not on fire. And when it is, chances are, especially if you are white, there are plenty of people who will come at it with their own hoses before help arrives. Put an end to narcissistic replies of others who we know matter and who are shown they matter most days and certainly when it counts most. People show up for them – for us, for white America.
Bring your hose to this fire. Show up for black America. Today.
- Actively listen
- Ask questions to understand better
- Research, especially beyond headlines
- Remember black people are dying
- Reframe messages before repeating them. Yes, the riots are sad, but nothing is as sad as the loss of life. So, swap the importance of the two so the importance of loss of life is shown.
- Remember looters and rioters are not protestors. Separate them in your mind and reframe them in your speech.
- Share the good. Protestors are coming back during the day to clean what rioters left behind. Cops are kneeling or walking arm in arm with protestors.
- Don’t be silent. If you see something or hear something, say something. Don’t allow anyone you know or communicate with say something they could reframe with a little education.
- Stop saying you don’t see color. I get it – your message. I do. I may have said it before myself. But the message is lost. What we mean is we don’t see a difference between ourselves and black people, our friends and neighbors. But what we fail to recognize is when we make them colorless, we lose their culture, their being, and their value. What we fail to see is that by making them colorless, the message they get from us is that we do not see them. Instead, see them and tell them you see them.
- See them, hear them, and share them. Black creators are everywhere. Buy their stuff, share their content, credit them when you know it’s their song or dance.
- Black lives matter. Let it be so.
I mentioned earlier trans lives and bathrooms. I won’t get into bathroom rights and how anyone could possibly think the right to pee is up for debate.
Just over a week ago, as our country processed the death of George Floyd and protestors started to take the streets in vigil, police killed Tony McDade, a transman in Florida.
Nineteen of the twenty-six known trans murders of 2019 were black. That is 73% of trans murders who were black.
Say their name:
Click below for a list of black lives gone under the guise of police protection.
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/865261916/a-decade-of-watching-black-people-die
Finally, I wasn’t going to mention the DefundThePolice issue because I hadn’t researched it enough to defend it, but I can say I am certain no one wants to get rid of our police forces. They do want budgets to be better distributed among communities. Black Lives Matter isn’t the only initiative to take this on either.
The goal here is to not allow increased funding to police forces who have history of targeting black communities but rather pour those funds into the investment of community. Money currently dedicated to patrolling neighborhoods puts black lives at risk whereas monies allocated for housing, education, at-risk youth programs, mental health, etc. could help create a safer community where police patrols at current levels are unnecessary. The fact in these areas is funding violence prevention measures rather than the force known to oppress the black families in these neighborhoods is money better spent.
Defunding the police does not mean get rid of the police. In larger cities like Chicago and New York City, police forces take upwards of one-third of the city’s budget. This means public grounds, schools, medical care, and initiatives for youth, mental health, and community all share two-thirds. The balance of police funds and taxpayer benefits is off-kilter in many of these places. The imbalance between police funds and the culture of police brutality, on the other hand, is a much closer and staggering number.
So, there, with all the research I still have to do on the defunding alliance, I still get it because I actively listen.
I hope I have hit important points. I hope you’ve reached the end of this feeling empowered to make a difference and stop the rhetoric while spreading love and kindness like glitter because that will stay forever.
Black Lives Matter
Peace be with you
~Stella