Black Lives Matter never meant that all lives don’t. Anyone who would argue against that fact is most likely white, privileged and part of the problem. Denouncing BLM is a result of your opaque privilege that grants you the luxury of ignorance. There have only been 17 days in 2020 when police have not killed someone. Black people make up 28% of the people who have been killed this year although we only make up 13% of the population*. Black Lives Matter means that you and I have two distinct realities. My reality is based on fear. An unwavering fear that convinces me the sight of a police car on the opposite side of the road could somehow end in my injury or death. A fear that forces a law-abiding citizen to feel like a criminal in the presence of blue uniforms.
The consistent reminder that our lives do not matter has been the driving force in the BLM movement. The hashtag was created in 2013 after George Zimmerman, the man who followed and shot an unarmed 17-year-old black boy named Trayvon Martin, was acquitted. The hashtag may be recent but the movement dates back to the moment the first slave rebellion began. Identifying slavery as the era responsible for devaluing black lives may help you realize that this country has never considered us equal. The hashtag conceptualized and modernized the same fight the likes of Nat Turner and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have been fighting. So, I don’t need scientific statistics to see that the American justice system was not designed for my protection, history proves that. However, let me spell it out for those who do. From 2013–2020 98.3% of officers who have murdered a person have not been charged with a crime*. If a police officer can strangle me to death in broad daylight, in the middle of the street and on camera without consequence, how does my life matter?
A couple of months ago, I was on my way to meet a friend. I pulled up at a red light in the far left lane. I wanted to drive forward to get directly behind the car ahead of me to avoid missing the light. However, the car to my right was positioned slightly in my lane. I stopped behind it and considered trying to inch past it. Normally, I wouldn’t attempt it. This time I did. I immediately regretted it. The shriek of my right mirror as it scraped the matte-wrapped, military-green Jeep made my heart sink. I quickly put my car in park as the driver got out of his vehicle and walked toward mine. He asked “What were you doing? This car is expensive. I need it fixed immediately.” I was emotional and apologetic. He continued with a sympathetic tone and expression, “I don’t want to call the police because I’m not sure how that would go.” He didn’t need to elaborate.
In 2015, I marched for Sandra Bland, a black woman who was found hung in her holding cell after two male police officers brutalized her during a traffic stop. As I sat on the side of the road, my mind flashed black to the video of Sandra’s car in an identical position to mine with the police in her rearview. Then it switched to her chilling, alleged posthumous mugshot — the one I saw at 14-years-old and have been trying to forget since. Sweating profusely, I rolled my window down to make sure he hadn’t changed his mind about involving police. He didn’t. Why would he? I am a Black woman and he’s a Hispanic man. We exchanged names and numbers because he decided he’d rather trust a stranger to pay him $2400 for damages by the end of the week than involve the police. I was grateful for the driver’s decision because the minor mishaps of my “bad day” could’ve become a supporting argument in the fight for police reform.
Right now, all lives don’t matter. All lives include black lives, mentally ill lives, homeless lives, women’s lives, poor lives, etc. If you truly believe those lives matter, Sandra Bland’s, Trayvon Martin’s, Walter Wallace Jr’s, Willie McCoy’s and every other death caused by the police would outrage you. The BLM movement that could bring them justice wouldn’t trouble you. It would move you.
*mappingpoliceviolence.org (2020)
