Alton Sterling was tasered and tackled and murdered in Baton Rouge. Police got a call suggesting a man fitting his description pulled a gun on someone. Witnesses said they saw no such thing. The entire crime was captured on multiple recordings. His gun never left the recesses of his pocket, until it was removed by one of the police officers. After six point-blank shots. Sterling died Tuesday night, right there on the ground.
Philando Castile was riding in the car with his girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter on Wednesday when police pulled him over in Minnesota. Castile had a concealed carry permit. When the officer asked for his identification, he told the officer his permit status and that he had his gun on him. He then told the officer he was reaching for his wallet to show his identification, slowly reached into his pocket, and was shot point-blank. His girlfriend live-streamed the moments just after the shooting onto Facebook. He died in that car.
Two Black men. Not even 24 hours separating their murders.
When I was little, my parents used to say “if you’re ever in any danger, get to a phone and call 911 right away.”
Who do you call when 911 is the danger?
But who do you call when 911 kills you?
Ask Black Americans; they lost their trust in the police force when it was developed to round up run-away slaves. Since they were dragged here centuries ago, they’ve had to swim against the current at every turn in the river. Slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow laws, arson, segregation, housing discrimination, job discrimination, educational discrimination, mass incarceration, legal discrimination, medical discrimination…they’ve faced it all.
And throughout everything, they did it alone. The police were always defending the people in power, and their systems of corruption. They did not defend the vulnerable when the vulnerable were Black.
At a peaceful protest in Dallas on July 7 coordinated in response to the murders of these two innocent men, a sniper on a roof shot eleven police officers. Five are dead. Prior to this shooting, the two sides were clear of any confrontation. When the shots rang out, protesters ran for cover, thinking they were the targets of these bullets. The officers attacked and murdered by this shooter did not deserve to die.
The Black Lives Matter movement has publicly come out against the actions that shooter took Thursday night. But people are still twisting the events to fit their narrative of a disturbed reality in which innocent people’s right to live depends on the color of their skin. On their income level. On their gender. On their sexuality. And on the profile of their murderer(s).
Please do not package your response as “All Lives Matter” in these coming days/weeks/forever. How would you feel if you went to a peaceful protest for the slain officers, with signs saying that their lives mattered, and people responded that you were being exclusionary? That all lives matter, not just the ones of those officers shot from a rooftop gunman?
The Internet has been gifting us with great comparisons to the All Lives Matter movement.
Going the doctor to see about a sprained ankle, and the doctor responding “all bones matter!” And then fixing nothing.
Firefighters responding to a single house fire by saying “all houses matter,” and refusing to give any one house “special treatment.” So either they do nothing, and the house burns down, or they hose down every single house in the world…wasting everything.
People showing up to a Breast Cancer Awareness event and reminding everyone that “all cancers matter.” And then boycotting the event because it gives “special treatment” to a certain form of cancer. Fixing nothing.
Reminding people that all lives matter when they’re trying to call attention to the threat against Black lives does nothing but silence them. Black lives are part of all lives. Saying that all lives matter draws attention away from the lives being taken by police officers daily. It draws attention away from Black lives, cut short so often in this country.
The point of events, protests, activism, language in general (to be honest), is to raise awareness about a specific thing that has a lot of people paying a lot of attention. Black Lives Matter is no different. This is a movement that sees an institutional problem within our police force. Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Michael Brown – these were unarmed Black people whose deaths span years. But the stories are shockingly similar to one another.
When stories of innocent Black people being murdered by police have no common racial/ethnic (concerning the officers), cultural, or demographic factor, the only constant thread through it all is the badge.
Not all who wear the badge are guilty, but the guilty seem to usually be wearing the badge.
Each point in our history suggests that, to a lot of Americans, not all lives matter. To many, some lives don’t matter.
The longer we ignore the ignorance and hatred of others, the longer it will take us to heal as a people. Only by recognizing the problem, and listening to the people who fight every day, can we ever hope to solve this network of injustices.
