by Bryan K. Bullock
The simple, straight-forward assertion “Black Lives Matter” seems to jangle the sensibilities of millions of white Americans, who counter that “ALL lives matter” or “BLUE lives matter.” They feel assaulted by affirmations of the worthiness of Black life, yet claim to be non-racist. In the final analysis, they want Black people to “play nice with oppression and make no demands on society.”
Blacks Have Always Had to Fight to Make Their Lives Matter in America
by Bryan K. Bullock
“In America, the issue is, as it always has been, anti-black racism and white supremacy.”
When Black Lives Matter activists crashed a Donald Trump rally, Trump deepened his connection with white supremacy by responding with “All lives matter.” This response is wholly predictable given his “angry white man” campaign strategy. But it is a response that far too many liberal whites and blacks repeat as well, which is why, unfortunately, it deserves yet more discussion. What is clear, is that the reactions to African Americans asserting that Black Lives Matters, such as “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter,” are simply that: reactionary, knee jerk responses with no thought process or historical understanding behind the response.
Anyone with a functioning cerebral cortex knows that white life matters in America. To even have to address this is silly and a waste of time. In fact, white life matters throughout the globe. White supremacy in America shapes and informs how whites view themselves and how people of African descent get to view themselves through the white lenses of media. White lives are not snuffed out by the police every 28 hours, nor are majority white communities poisoned by lead in their water supply, nor are their communities routinely burdened by environmental toxins, nor is their unemployment rate twice that of other groups of Americans and mass incarceration is not an epidemic threatening the future of white families. White opinions matter on every news station and talk show, where whites get to have opinions on black lives, when most whites have never spent time in majority black communities or read books on the black condition in America.
Anyone, black or white, who views the BLM moniker as a negation of the value of white life, should first, ask themselves why they believe that. None of the leaders of the BLM movement have said their movement is against white people. The reaction to BLM by whites and many blacks, is itself a function of white supremacy. Any assertion by blacks of the reality of the continuing historical burdens that they themselves live, is met with resistance by white society and by blacks who have bought into white supremacy.
“Blacks could not even WANT to have power, without having to explain themselves and justify that desire.”
Something similar occurred when Stokely Carmichael and others proclaimed that African descendant people wanted Black Power. Despite the fact that the slogan was aspirational, meaning that blacks wanted, not actually had, control of the communities that they lived in, this aspiration was met with fear and condemnation from white society and reactionary forces in black America. Blacks could not even WANT to have power, without having to explain themselves and justify that desire.
Globally, white former colonial powers get to colonize non-white people, bomb non-white people, destroy entire non-white countries and then the white citizens of those countries get to complain when those non-whites seek refuge in their white countries. Black devotees of “All lives matter” along with their white allies, don’t seem to notice that there was no “Jus Si Charlie” global moment for the killings of Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Tamir Rice, Rakia Boyd or for any of the countless other African Descendant people mowed down by state violence. Parisians didn’t change their Facebook pages in mass numbers to the pictures of Sandra Bland or to a picture of Flint. World leaders didn’t rush to America to stand in solidarity with the protestors in Baltimore and Ferguson or to condemn blue violence against black people. However, the Ferguson protestors and black people do have allies in places like Palestine. Leaders in the Hands Up Coalition report receiving tweets from young people in Palestine as they faced tanks on American soil. The Palestinians tweeted and texted them on how to construct makeshift face masks out of handkerchiefs to protect themselves from tear gas. No such advice came from Parisians, British or from most white Americans for that matter. The Palestinians understand what’s it like to live under oppressive conditions, but, more importantly, they understand the problems in using euphemisms and nice sounding words like “Peace Process.” “All lives matter,” like “peace process,” takes the focus away from the real problem and the responsibility away from those with the power. In Palestine, the issue is occupation, not peace. There can be no peace under occupation. In America, the issue is, as it always has been, anti-black racism and white supremacy. There has never been a time in this nation’s history where black lives were on equal par with white lives. In fact, there can be no equality of “lives”, in a racist society.
“The Ferguson protestors and black people do have allies in places like Palestine.”
Interestingly, where were the calls for “All lives matter” PRIOR TO, the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement? Clearly, it didn’t exist. And it didn’t exist because for most whites, the plight of African Americans and whether their lives “matter,” is not something they consciously think about on a daily basis. It does not rank high on their radar of issues of importance. Several polls have shown that most whites are more concerned about being the victim of terrorism by Arabs or Muslims, than they are about the material living conditions in Black communities. That means that they are more concerned about something that they have a statistically small chance of ever experiencing, than they are about the actual lived experiences of black people facing police terrorism every day in America. The lives of African descendant people such as Ramarly Graham, shot dead in his own home in front of his grandmother, are not important to the masses of whites in America. Where were the “All Lives Matter” people when Kenneth Chamberlain, a 68 year-old former Marine with a chronic heart condition, was tazed, shot with a beanbag gun and then shot in the chest twice, for the infraction of having mistakenly called Life Aid and for refusing to allow the police into his home for fear of his life? White veterans did not protest en mass at the murder of a fellow vet. Historically, all veterans lives haven’t matter equally anyway, as African descendant veterans were frequently lynched wearing the uniform they wore to fight for global white supremacy. White New Yorkers were not mobilizing in large numbers to protest the unequal and racist application of stop and frisk. Clearly Trump was not shouting “all lives matter” at that time.
“The lives of police clearly matter in that they get to shoot and kill black people without retribution or prosecution.”
The reactionary meme “Blue lives matter” is even more comical, in a racist way, than “All lives matter.” It is clearly true that blue lives matter in America and to force this concept into discussions of black life shows the power of the police in a white supremacists environment. The lives of police clearly matter in that they get to shoot and kill black people, typically without retribution or prosecution, every 28 hours in America. All they need to say is that they were in fear, whether that fear was reasonable or based on objective facts or not, or that they thought the black suspect had a gun. The political power of police unions goes unchallenged at the very same moment where other public sector unions, like teachers, are vilified in the media and by the political establishment of both parties – but, in particular, by the Republican Party. Because the police are simply the enforcement arm of the government, they are granted considerable legal immunity for their actions and they are given enormous protections. Blue lives are protected in law, where in many states, killing a police officer is an offense punishable by the death penalty. In criminal trials, jurors are encouraged to give the police the benefit of the doubt, a privilege which should actually go to the defendant. Judges write opinions and legislatures write laws giving the police greater and greater authority to arrest, surveil and murder Americans. The canary in the coal mine of these increased powers are typically African descendant people, but also other disfavored groups in American society.
Blue “lives” are protected by Kevlar vests, by the lawful use of force, by the criminalization of large swaths of American society, by criminalizing petty offenses like wearing sagging pants, by S.W.A.T. teams, by Tasers, by license plate readers and a whole host of protections, tools and resources that have never been afforded to the masses of African Americans. Blues “lives” are protected by allowing them to engage in a further militarization of tactics and weapons.
“In criminal trials, jurors are encouraged to give the police the benefit of the doubt, a privilege which should actually go to the defendant.”
The militarization of the police did not begin with the armed forces showing up in Ferguson, but actually began with the government’s response to the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. S.W.A.T. teams were created to assault Panther headquarters. Although the Panthers were deemed a security threat to the United States, this designation was not based a real threat to national security. The mere sight of intelligent, articulate black men and women who asserted their Second Amendment rights to bear arms and their human right to self defense, which whites do all the time, was enough for the FBI to label them the greatest national security threat facing the United States and to begin the militarization of police forces to squash out the lives of black activists in ways that have never been done to white supremacist groups in America.
Finally, what’s in a name? If white allies and the black bourgeois cannot support the struggle, simply because they disapprove of the name of the movement, then several points must be made. One, they are focused on trivialities in the face of a crisis. The assault on black people, black communities, laws enacted to grant blacks certain rights, are all under attack. If people are more concerned with the name and not the conditions the name sprang from, then they are not allies to the cause. What we now call the civil rights movement wasn’t referred to that way at the time, and the various formations that sprang up didn’t sit around in the face of lynchings, arguing about what to call their activism. And in fact there wasn’t universal agreement on whether the focus should be on civil rights, meaning domestic or constitutional rights, or on human rights, which people like Malcolm X and W.E.B. DuBois preferred. They chose a form of activism that suited their political philosophy and did what they could do.
“If people are more concerned with the name and not the conditions the name sprang from, then they are not allies to the cause.”
Two, if people can’t support a movement lead by young black people to address systemic racism which often results in the unwarranted deaths at the hands of law enforcement, simply because they don’t approve of the label associated with said movement, then those people need to either, find some other organization to get involved in that will address these issues, or accept the fact that their criticism of the label is simply an excuse for their own inaction. Far too many African Americans are more incensed by young people’s response to oppression, than they are to the oppression that these young people are responding too. They are the modern version of the white moderate Dr. King criticized. They are, as Dr. King stated of white moderates, “more devoted to “order” than to justice.” And in final analysis, critics of BLM, simply want “order” – the type of order where African descendant people play nice with oppression and make no demands on society. Black lives have never had the luxury of complacent lives. To have done so, would have been to give in to the order of slavery and segregation. We have had to fight for our marginal freedom from the bowels of the slave ships to the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. We have had to fight, escape, take up arms, protest peacefully, protest confrontationally, rebel, and every form in between just to be at this critical moment we are in now. People who assert “all lives matter” and “blue lives matter” not only mock our history and our current day realities, but they seek to shut us up, marginalize our oppression and discredit our pain. “All lives matter” and “blue lives matter” are simply extensions of the Trump supporting racists who chant “white lives matter.” They care not for the source of our pain, they just don’t want to hear us holler.
Attorney Bryan K. Bullock practices law in Merrillville, Indiana.
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