Since the '90s, police brutality has been a topic of fear and terror amongst the black community. In 2012, the wrongful death of Trayvon Martin started the Black Lives Matter movement. And still today, black men and women alike are being killed by cops.
Something that plagues the Black Lives Matter movement in an attempt to minimize the death of all these black people, is the concept of respectability politics. This concept implies that if black people would act "respectable," meaning to conform to that white people view of being a non-disturbance, that they would have less of a chance of being killed by them. This is dangerous for two reasons: first, even if black people did conform to being a "non-disturbance," this doesn't lessen the chances of being killed by a police officer; and secondly, it implies that the lives of people that don't act respectably are somehow worth less than the lives of those that do.
Because of this concept, the media constantly demonizes the men that are killed by police, in hopes that society will see them as less than men. They pull out mugshots and past offenses; they bring up any illegal things they may or may not have done. They use harmful rhetoric: Trayvon Martin was a thug; Mike Brown was a thief; Eric Garner was a disturbance.
This is also dangerous when it works the other way. Recently, a 15-year-old boy named Jordan Edwards was shot and killed by a police officer in Texas. Immediately people started bringing up his GPA, the fact that he was on honor roll, and the fact that he never got into trouble. Bringing up these facts implies that he deserved to live because he was intelligent. But really he deserved to live because he was human.
Only black people have to justify their lives with their accomplishments. Only black people have to prove that they deserve to be here and to take up space. Only black people have to prove that their lives matter.
We need to take respectability politics and throw it out the window. We need to get people to understand that black people do not need to justify their right to live. Being born and being here is enough of a reason that our lives are important.
Because when we say Black Lives Matter, we don't mean only respectable black lives matter. We mean All Black Lives Matter.
Even the black lives that are loud, the black lives that smoke weed, the black lives that walk around with their pants hanging down, the black lives that have mugshots, and the black lives that are in prison.
All Black Lives Matter. Even if you think they don't.
