Tweet something and caption it with #BlackLivesMatter and you’re bound to get responses from Confederate flag flying, Islam hating, Trump supporting, Tomi Lahren retweeting trolls that live for packing as much hatred into 140 characters as humanly possible. They’ll spend hours arguing with you, saying, “if you don’t resist then you won’t get shot.” Yes, because being pinned to the ground and trying to breathe warrants multiple bullets at point blank range, or crashing your bike into a car then getting handcuffed for it warrants getting pepper sprayed.
It makes me wonder if they’ve ever read the constitution that they use to justify their freedom of speech (aka racism). The eighth amendment protects against cruel and unusual punishments, but as long as they have their guns and bigotry who cares about reading the rest of the amendments?! They also reach to the heavens trying to justify the murder of a child because he was “stealing”, but last time I checked the punishment for stealing was not multiple bullets. If you’re lucky (or rather unlucky), you’ll find one that loves to trumpet the argument “but Black on Black crime kills more Black people than the police do, so why doesn’t #BLM talk about that.” I can’t help but roll my eyes and groan when they sound so proud of themselves for saying that, especially because the people that love to use that argument rarely apply it to themselves.
Based on that reasoning, since heart disease kills more Americans than cancer, we should not treat cancer until everyone with heart disease is cured. Imagine telling a family “sorry, we can’t treat your mother’s breast cancer because heart disease is killing more people.” It’s like saying we shouldn’t go after Islamic terrorists because in America more citizens have killed each other with guns than have been killed by religious extremists. Now that would send our dear right-wingers into a frenzy. The world, for the most part, does not operate like a Boolean value. It is not 0 or 1, yes or no, one or the other. We do not have to exclusively erase gang violence or Black on Black crime before we can talk about and campaign against police brutality.
The opponents of Black Lives Matter are so hung up on the fact that, even though it was started in reaction to Trayvon Martin’s murder by George Zimmerman, the movement does not address Black on Black crime, which kills more Black people than officers do. Do you yell at your foot for it not being able to digest food? Do you yell at your right arm for not being able to see?
No, because every part of your body has a different role to play just like these organizations.
Do you yell at schools for not housing zebras? No, because the purpose of a school is to educate students while the purpose of zoos is to cage wild animals, so why does Black Lives Matter have to address EVERY single struggle faced by the black community? Why can’t we let Black Lives Matter address police brutality, the HELPER foundation address gang violence, and the NAACP address legal issues involving black americans?
We have three branches in our federal government because it’s complicated to run the United States of America, and it requires an immense amount of organization to keep things running relatively smoothly. Similarly, it takes many branches to solve the abundance of problems that Black Americans face because it’s very complicated to be Black in this society. Black Lives Matter are the arms on the body of Black America, working with other organizations that take on the role of different body parts to fix the entirety of Black America. Next time you want to bring that tired “Black on Black crime” argument to the table, check your privilege and try again.
