As children we are constantly told to share, to help and to love each other. We are told there is always enough for everyone. However, when we grow up, those values that were instilled in us slowly vanish from some of our hard drives.
I’ve often been the kind to wonder:
How am I supposed to share with others when I barely have enough for myself?
How am I supposed to help others when I too need help?
How am I going to love others in this world when they don't love me?
How am I going to love others when I'm not even sure if I love myself?
Being black in America often means we are allowed to bring the pie, slice the pie, serve the pie; yet when attempting to partake in the enjoyment of eating the pie, we are often reprimanded. When we say Black Lives Matter, we are broadening the conversation around state violence to include all the ways in which black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state.
In the words of the Black Lives Matter creators,
"We are talking about the ways in which black lives are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity."
When I initially heard the question, “If Martin Luther King Jr. was alive today, would he support the All Lives Matter movement or the Black Lives Matter movement,” I couldn't come to a clear conclusion.
Mr. King was a man who wanted everyone to see beyond color and be treated equally. However, I believe that if he was alive today, he would see the tragic times of police brutality and constant discrimination that we currently live in. This leads me to believe that he would support the Black Lives Matter movement. However, he would not say one life is more valuable than another, but rather he would put emphasis on those lives which seem to be in more danger.
It's beginning to seem like there's an embedded preconception of black people being dangerous. Mr. King was fighting for civil rights legally in the streets. Nowadays, it seems like we’re all just fighting period. While Dr.King would have had his differences in the ways in which some political demonstrations are carried out, he would have seen that they were trying to protest for change.
If Dr. King was alive he would see the still existing racism within our nation's problems with police brutality, the school-to-prison pipeline, and mass racially disproportionate incarceration. With the following startling statistic from American Progress, "While people of color make up about 30 percent of the United States' population, they account for 60 percent of those imprisoned." The prison population grew by 700 percent from 1970 to 2005, a rate that is outpacing crime and population rates. The incarceration rates disproportionately impact men of color: 1 in every 15 African American men and 1 in every 36 Hispanic men are incarcerated in comparison to 1 in every 106 white men," we can see why we need to be worried about ourselves before we are able to help others to the fullest of our abilities.
Figuring out if Mr. King would be for one movement or the other takes you back to grade school when you initially learned about the Venn Diagram. It's as if your teacher said, "Fill one side with pros for the Black Lives Matter movement and the other for the All Lives Matter movement. In the middle, compare."
You cannot know what is supposed to be the same for both until you've had some of the pie yourself.
