Whose lives matter?
ALL lives DO matter. No question about it.
No one is calling that into question. No one doubts it. No one argues with it. White lives, yellow, red, brown and black lives, all matter. Equally. No difference.
So, why are some folks proclaiming that “black lives matter?” Are they telling us that, to them, nonblack lives do not matter? That black lives matter more than other lives? That they don’t care about other lives? Are these people being racist, as some have suggested?
As a white woman who has been standing with the Black Lives Matter folks on the Greenfield Town Common on Saturday mornings, I can categorically say that, to me, no life matters more than any other. As a white woman with both white and black grandchildren, all of whom I dearly love, all lives carry the same importance in my eyes.
So, why do I stand with the Black Lives Matter folks, and why have I been active in defending them?
First, we need to recognize that black lives have historically not mattered in our country. In the first two centuries of what is now the United States of America, it was clear that black lives had little value except to the extent that they provided profits and/or comfort for those who “owned” them.
Slaves, usually but not always black, were treated badly, raped, beaten and even killed by their owners, with no one being held accountable. Families were broken up, children sold, men and women taken from their spouses. Their needs, their love, their families, their pain did not matter. Blacks were not considered to be human beings but, instead, property, and, as such, could be disposed of at their owner’s will.
Once slavery ended, the Ku Klux Klan and white mobs killed blacks (and their white allies) at will, often on trumped-up charges, and rarely were any whites tried or punished. Black families lived in fear of being accused of anything that was perceived as offensive, even just looking at a white woman, for example, and so black men and boys learned to walk with their eyes cast downward rather than risk an accusation of any kind.
As such, even their pride and dignity were denied them.
In 2016, black lives are still denied their true value, with many jobs being denied them. Housing and schools are still being de facto segregated and often do not meet even basic health or educational standards. Jail sentences are still being meted out for smaller crimes and for longer periods for blacks than for whites.
Too often, when blacks do find work, it is for wages on which no one could sustain a family. So, they work two, even three, jobs and must rely on grandparents or friends to watch their children.
Yet, these people are accused of depending on welfare, of being lazy, of not caring for their children, of being responsible for their own misery!
And today, in 2016, blacks are still dying in record numbers.
A black man is choked by police on the streets of New York for selling cigarettes, in an effort to help support his family. A woman is pulled from her car for some misdemeanor and dies while in police custody. A child playing with a toy gun is shot to death within seconds of the police arriving on the scene.
Yet, no one is held accountable; no one is punished. If the tables were reversed, I do not know of a single white person who would not demand that the system be changed so that justice would exist for all people.
Justice is all that anyone is asking for. No one is asking for special favors. No one is asking that their own failures be ignored. No one is claiming to be better or perfect or wanting anything more than what others have and what is their right as human beings and American citizens.
All anyone is asking is that black lives (and white, yellow, red and brown lives) be given the same importance! As much as all the others. No more, but no less.
Having had the value of black lives ignored for so long, then, people are taking to the streets to remind us all that black lives matter, too.
Just like all the others.
Louise Amyot is a Greenfield resident and grandmother of many lovely shades of humanity.