Regarding Black Lives Matter
It is obvious, at least to me, that the Black Lives Matter movement is not anti-white, anti-American, it is not anti-anything. Throughout recorded history (and I’m sure before then), from time to time groups of fellow humans have had to stand up and say “hey, we’re human too, and we just wanted to be treated as such”, with full dignity and equity. The Jews famously stood up in Egypt, the Catholics in Northern Ireland, in every corner of the globe people have stood up. The colonists here stood up against England, the Boston Tea Party, our very Nation (which tragically was founded at the horrible expense of indigenous people) was founded upon protest and revolution. The Women’s Suffrage protest helped secure the right to vote for women in this Country which was not originally contained in the Constitution. The examples are too many to list here.
My ancestors came to these shores only 100 years ago. Although they (and I) have experienced some anti-semitism, simply because of the color of our skin we have had conferred upon us advantages in the workplace, housing, education, etc. I see that and will not deny that. The initial agrarian economy of this Nation, which was built upon cotton, and allowed this Nation to become the world player that it is, was as a result of the explosion in Enslaved Africans being brought here as property following the invention of the Cotton Gin by Eli Whitney. That machine facilitated the processing of cotton in the fields and, in turn, created a demand for labor that resulted in the unthinkable (or, sadly, the thinkable), the need for ever increasing numbers of slaves. Humans were torn from their homes, their loved ones, their earth, placed on terrible slave ships in inhuman conditions, and brought here. Ship owners, banks, investors in Europe, everyone got rich on the tortured backs of the Enslaved Africans.
Then this Country was founded on, what some have said, are the original sins of slavery and the holocaust of the Native Americans. Our Constitution contains language which, among other things, conveyed that people of color are lesser than whites. Lincoln abolished slavery, but only below the Mason-Dixon line. It continued in the North for a time. Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, a Supreme Court decision that said separate but equal is equal, and on and on, and so many other events and acts prevented, and continue to prevent, the Enslaved Africans, and their descendants, from having equal and equitable footing in this Country.
So now it’s 400 years later. I don’t hear my brothers and sisters asking for reparations, all they damn well want is to have the promises and guarantees set forth in the Constitution to finally, and once and for all, apply justly, fairly and equitably to them. That is not too much to ask for, particularly for the descendants of the people upon whose backs this Country was built but have never been allowed to share in the bounties. Yes, there has been some violence in the protests, but often times over the centuries there has been. More importantly, the rather limited incidents of violence should not blind us to the underlying just cause. This Country will never fully heal, and never live up to its promise, until we look inside our collective selves and do what’s right.
The purpose of the Black Lives Matter movement, like the Women’s Suffrage Movement, and so many other movements that have been undertaken in the past, is in “Order to form a more perfect Union . . .” (quoted from the Preamble to The Constitution of the United States of America). Until we do what’s right, we will never be that land of brotherhood “from sea to shining sea”. It is not simply enough for me to stand by and say I am not a racist. I have evolved into an anti-racist. Silence is complicity.
One World/ One Love. Peace.
