While I was on rounds Monday, my co-RA and I were asked to attend the Perspectives meeting on the Black Lives Matter Movement. After sitting in the meeting for a half hour and listening to everything that everyone was saying, it really got me wondering: do black lives really matter, and if so how much do they matter? So I started to think about it and came up with the conclusion that in the American society, as much as we want it to, black lives will probably never matter. Not only black lives but minority lives will never matter.
By now you are probably reading this article saying that this is not true and I do not know what I am talking about, but let us look at this and be real with ourselves together. In a room filled with a bunch of African American and Caucasian young adults and adults, the question was asked, " how many non-black people would want to be black for a day?" Only one person raised their hand, and to be honest his answer was very logical. When the same question was asked to non-white people more than five raised their hand, and even though the others did not, the audience knew they wanted to. It is sad when people can live in a country and say they do not what to be like a certain minority group because they know that minority group is always being discriminated against just for being that specific group of people, or in this cause just for being black.
Black people literally face discrimination just for being black. They are killed, arrested, targeted, etc. for being black. If you think that that is not true, let me give you an example. I know of a guy and for the purpose of privacy I will call him Sean. Sean was driving one day and had his phone up on his dashboard like every other regular person does to use their GPS. While driving a white driver cut in front of him then moved to the side and told him to "get off you f**king phone," Sean ignored the guy and kept driving but then he did it again and that really upset Sean. After dealing with being cut off twice, Sean switched lanes, sped up and cut the driver off.
The driver then drove to the side of Sean, and Sean asked the driver what he was doing but the driver drove away. A few miles up the street Sean was pulled over by a cop and arrested. It turns out the white driver had called the cops and told them that Sean threatened him with his gun, and the white driver felt unsafe. Though Sean had a gun because he was licensed to carry, his gun was under the passenger seat, even though the white driver said it was on the car seat and Sean pulled it out on him. Sean spent three to four days in jail for absolutely no reason and in the end he was let go. Sean, in reality, was simply the victim of being arrested for being black in a predominantly white and racist neighborhood.
When you live in a country where you can lose you life like Treyvon Martin, or be arrested like Sean for being black and absolutely nothing happens to bring you justice, we really need to start asking the question of how much black lives really matter, because like I said earlier to me it does not especially in this country. We can riot and protest and do what ever we may think can get us to that point but I personally feel like we will just be wasting our time.
No matter how much we chant #BlackLivesMatter or show the videos of the racism nobody will believe it except for us, and that is the problem when living in a white country with no privilage.