Sunday, July 19, 2015

An Angry White Woman on Why Black Lives Matter



Why is a middle age white woman writing about Black Lives Mattering? Because white people need to challenge other white people about racism in America. We also need to stand together with our brothers and sisters of all races, religions and value systems to create sweeping change across the country. The time to act is now.

We white people are a privileged group of people. We have never had to worry that a police officer might attack us or our children for little or no cause. We have not grown up as victims of bigotry and prejudice just because of our skin color. We have not had to live through a long history of slavery and injustice, and we are not even aware of our own privilege most of the time.

Write me off as an angry white woman. Or, call me a person who wants to increase fairness, civility, equal rights, and compassion for all people. We white people need to not only face our own internal racism, we need to talk with and educate each other about our racial values, and we need to change our society’s system of structural racism.

We now know some cities’ names only because of extreme violence against black people. Ferguson and Charleston come to mind. Think of the names of so many black lives that were recently and abruptly halted because of racism, violence and guns, some of them being children: Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Jordan Davis, Walter Scott, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Jonathan Sanders, and many more. All of these black lives mattered and they were killed unfairly and violently by white people.

Although there is still some controversy around the deaths of Sandra Brand and Jonathan Sanders, police violence happens so frequently, we white people can hardly imagine how African Americans feel about white people and about the United States of America. Doesn’t seem so united to me.

Our prisons and jails are so full of black lives, some incarcerated for not being able to pay bail for a traffic violation, or a petty crime. We imprison our poor and blacks, immigrants and people with minor drug offenses. Many of our correctional facilities are run by private corporations that make huge profits based on the amount of beds filled each day, incentivizing profit.

Let’s change the dialogue, let’s ask white people to take responsibility for changing our patriarchal, mostly white systems. This is no small task. We cannot change everyone’s minds or values, but we can speak out and influence our leaders, asking them to make changes that will improve black lives.

Black people have been oppressed, injured and killed in unspeakable ways throughout our nation’s history, and we are still wounding blacks today in prisons, in housing projects and in current educational systems. We white people are much of the reason that structural racism still occurs, and it is up to us to do something about it. 

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