I don’t like people much. The hatred. The racism. The violence. The greed. The anger. The fear. It’s all so exhausting. People destroy things just to destroy them. Steal just to steal. Hurt just to hurt. Not just here in America, but around the world. People are just…inhumane.
Along one of my morning walks I saw a house with the sign, Black Lives Matter/Justice For All. I started thinking about how people reacted to the phrase Black Lives Matter when it first began entering the America lexicon. White people, especially, jumped in with “All Lives Matter.” I, initially, thought the same. Why shouldn’t it be that all lives matter? But then I educated myself.
I looked back at the bravery exhibited by so many people of color. Those that fought against slave owners. The Underground Railroad. The Civil Rights movement. Sitting in the front of a bus. Sitting at a lunch counter. Going to school. Crossing a bridge for voting rights. Protesting the lack of justice for Blacks. Kneeling to the National Anthem. All knowing that they could be killed. So many who were killed. I learned about their struggle to be equal. To have the same rights and freedoms as the Whites. Not to be more than, but to be equal to. To have laws and justice applied equally. To be respected as a people. And I understood why it’s exponentially more important to say Black Lives Matter than All Lives Matter.
Because, while all lives should matter, clearly, they don’t. And all lives can’t matter until Black Lives Matter. We have proven, as a people, that Black lives matter less than White lives. Blacks, since the days of slavery, have been treated as a less valuable subset of humans. They are not respected as equals because they are not equal. White society won’t let them be equal.
I don’t know how we get past this nonsense. It’s not just Black lives though. It’s Hispanic and Latino lives. It’s Muslim and Jewish lives. It’s Asian and Middle Eastern lives. It’s Native American lives. Strip the skin off and remove any indication of religious preference and you’re left with muscles and tissue and organs and blood. And guess what? It all looks the same. If you’re dying and in need of an organ, perhaps you’ll find you don’t really care who it came from if it gives you back your life. Perhaps.
Nope, I don’t like people much. Not because of the color of the skin or the shape of their eyes or their bone structure. Not because of the name of the God they kneel before. Not because their foods smell or taste foreign to me. No, the people I don’t like much are the ignorant among us. The ones who don’t understand, and perhaps never will, that there is but one race – human – living on this one little planet of ours – Earth. We need to learn how to share. We need to learn to treasure this planet, and its inhabitants, human and creature. We need to learn how to love. How to love all of it. Everyone and everything. Because you know what? There is no Plan B.
And that’s all that matters.
~jwb~