As I wondered and wondered what I could possibly write about for this week, I kept thinking that I'd be unoriginal by writing about how black lives matter. Wouldn't I? I tried to stay away from the topic, but something in me made me feel inclined to write about it — just not the way that I originally thought I would. So I did what I always do when I'm supposed to be working: I went to social media.
I saw a few posts from radicals and extremists talking about how black lives matter while explaining to others that we weren't saying that our lives are above any, but how we were placing emphasis on those being lost at the hands of state officials. I saw white classmates continuously posting about their vacation, acting blind as if nothing had happened. Yet, what caught my attention the most was my black classmates and followers stating that they were fed up seeing posts pertaining to the Black Lives Matter movement — not because it shouldn't be happening, but because it was the black community's fault. My stomach turned as I read some of the posts.
I had to constantly remind myself that an opinion is an opinion no matter who agrees with it. I read posts about how African American men had nothing going for themselves, how most black girls were bound to be teen mothers, and how black fathers weren't fathers; they were more like sperm donors. I saw my black brothers saying that all of our women degrade themselves by the clothes they choose to wear and what they choose to call one another as if they weren't birthed from a black woman's body and fed from their mothers breast.
I sat with anger in my body as if the ignorance from the post had punched me square in the face. I thought about how someone who is/could be the target be so wrong about what's going on. It's you who is targeted. It's you who faces the school to prison pipeline. It's you who will never be called a mother but a baby mama. It's you who doesn't show potential to be the CEO and has to take orders in the drive thru.
I soon realized that maybe the reason people said what they said is because that's what they truly believe and is what they believed to be right. However, some of them were right; African American communities have failed us. The only way we can prove that black lives matter is by making black lives know they matter because we were born to be more than a statistic. When we, as a community, can recognize that everyone is different and comes with a different background, then we can finally get the rest of the world to see black lives matter.
Having said that, as long as we tear down people in our community, we will never be able to make a change and stop police officers from being corrupt. Once we do that, we can share our growth by making everyone realize that all lives matter, but until then, nothing will get fixed. Violence will never be the answer. Only love can fix what's been broken for years.
