By Jacob Richardson
If you think that saying black lives matter is racist, or that the racial strife gripping our country is unwarranted, then you need to reassess your opinion. You could meet the statement “black lives matter” with “white lives matter,” but that would be to miss the point. It is obvious that white lives matter. White people live longer on average, they live at a higher income level on average, white people are not incarcerated at such a high percentage; the list goes on and on. This is due to systemic oppression and the marginalization, whether conscious or not, of black people (other marginalized groups notwithstanding, though much of this could be extended to them as well).
We live in a society that conditions and habituates its citizens to find inferiority in the black population. Look up the creation of racism to control slave populations during New World European colonization. The practice was moved from one that defined the enslaved by nation and religion to ethnicity. The economic need for cheap labor in the colonies lined up well with the exploitation of west African tribes at war with each other. Along with the conflation of skin color with slavery came other heuristically or stereotypically projected associations with inferiority. All of which were false creations by a society looking to dehumanize a population of people so that they would feel less guilty about their actions.
By this “othering” of black people, they have been arbitrarily denied resources to flourish, even after slavery was made illegal in this country. By law black people are free, but the contrived colonial-era racist notions that limit their participation in society have stuck around much longer. One such limit is unequal access to education, for various reasons. Unequal access to education results in epistemic injustice, or a lack of ability to contribute concepts of understanding to the world. Civil rights efforts of the past two centuries have made progress on this account, though not enough.
Born of these efforts is a concept like black lives matter. It appears a slogan, but it is actually an assertion. Where it is obvious that it is not the case, in a society with so much statistical evidence to the contrary, and in which without public outcry and protest an event like the death of George Floyd could be normalized, we must adopt the concept that black lives matter! So, instead of meeting this concept with ignorance or hatred, you should instead enter into a sincere cooperation with black civil rights scholars, experts on racism and systemic oppression, learn their concepts and check your biases. Black lives matter needs to be screamed from the rooftops and felt in the heart of every American, because even now, in 2020, many Americans still don’t think so.
Jacob Richardson is a Loveland resident.
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June 26, 2020 at 07:28PM
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Jacob Richardson: Black lives matter because so many don’t think they do - Loveland Reporter-Herald
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