A friend said this to me the other day about the Black Lives Matter movement:
“Really, don’t all lives matter?!?” He was red in the face when he spoke these words. “What do they accomplish by showing up at public meetings and being disrespectful?”
I thought about this and said, “Well, we noticed.”
Today we have cultural-competencies workshops, degrees of study on Race Relations, and I have been to the table where black people and white people sit in dialogue. It’s all so polite.
We have been talking since 1865. If a civil war where 650,000 men -- black and white -- died fighting to save/end slavery did not move us towards real action, what will? We have the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and today 36 states have new stricter voting laws, and 32 states have enacted these laws and talk of repealing the 1965 Act.
Still we value the art of being polite. What’s really going on here?
My mother was fond of saying, “A man full of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.”
Black people are moving forward; it’s time for action. Real action. And if this means standing in the public forum and shouting down the established political framework, so be it. Shout away -- those of you in the Black Lives Matter Movement and the white people who support them.
Rage against the machine … and you don’t even have to ask politely and say please.
I’m Lou Ness, and that’s my perspective
