White Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter is self-evident to Black people. That much should be obvious. So, who is the moniker of the current movement for? Clearly, it is for White people who have not historically believed that Black people are people, and subsequently that our lives matter – that my life matters.

But, what is this BLM movement really up against? What is the challenge that White people, and others, are really facing?

In the last few weeks, the American lexicon has been flooded with the terms anti-racist and systemic and structural racism. Corporations, educational institutions and local communities of all stripes are entering into, “difficult conversations” about race. I am participating in a number of them. I’m familiar with how they proceed.

Renewed commitments to diversity and altruistic support of Black institutions abound. All of these things are good and appropriate. But, they do not address the core issue - Determining the mechanism for White people to truly see themselves and Black people as equally human. I have been grappling with how significant that challenge really is.

Breonna Taylor and Amy Cooper are two of the names etched into this historical moment. Breonna Taylor – the Black woman who was murdered by the police when, unannounced, they batter-rammed their way into her apartment with a no-knock warrant in the middle of the night and shot her to death. Amy Cooper – the White woman who, when asked by a Black man to put her dog on a leash in a park where dogs must be leashed, called the police and told them an African-American man was threatening her life. Breonna and Amy are co-dependent characters in the challenge facing the country.

Slavery is an indisputable American fact. The truth of that is beyond refute. It is core to the Southern Heritage that contemporary racists memorialize. In that history, Black women like Breonna Taylor and Black men like me, were for sale, like horses or bricks. At public slave auction blocks, there were signs offering…

For Sale. Negro. Woman. Young. Good for Breeding.

As detestable as that is to me, I’ve grown up with that historical record, of Black people as sub-human. I’ve seen countless images of myself, of Black people like my mother and father, being sold, being separated, being lynched, being burned, being whipped, being spat upon, being choked to death, being the Black character in the American play. It is the centerpiece of the ever-smoldering rage that so many Black people carry around in our DNA. It sets the stage for an ungodly objective, to merely demonstrate that which ought to be self-evident, that we are human beings. 

In todaytimes, that part of the Black Lives Matter movement is nothing new. Black people have been making the case that our lives matter forever. Fifty years ago, when Black people were marching in Memphis and around the South with placards that declared, “I AM A MAN”, that was the argument they were making. It was the answer to the question abolitionists asked a century earlier, “Am I not a man, and a brother?”

White people, however, are characters in the American play too. They are the guilty party James Baldwin alluded to in No Name in the Street. The depth of the challenge that the current movement is up against is measured by the degree to which White people have been shielded from this American experience of being dehumanized. There is no section of the American story where White people are not considered human beings because they are White.

For Sale. White. Woman. Young. Good for Breeding.

The wording of a sign like that doesn’t conjure up a mental image. It is so farfetched in the American story. White and Negro are not even parallel words. Negro, in the American lexicon is a noun, originally a thing, as in, a negro for sale. White is an adjective, as in, a white person. A white doesn’t even sound right. There isn’t a broadly used word analogous to Negro that refers to White people in American English. There for sure is no word with the sting of nigger, the expletive masquerading as a noun, for White people.

Take Amy Cooper a step further. There is no historical reference, real or imagined, of what that for sale sign might mean for an Amy character - in the tribe of Jackie O. America simply cannot see a White person in the role of the Black character. A white woman, stripped naked to her waist, bloody faced, slammed against a tree, wrists bound, and whipped. The sentence is incomplete because the image is non-existent. We cannot imagine Amy being lashed with fury with a salted and oiled bullwhip, ripping through the alabaster skin on her back and the sides her breasts repeatedly until her ribs are visible, her bosom cleaved and the remains of her dress soaked in blood and urine – then spit upon with some word like nigger that doesn’t exist, “that oughta teach you, you [nigger-like word] bitch.” All the while, the nation applauds and approves of the lesson to keep Amy in her place.

To be graphic here is not gratuitous, it is necessary. It is the real framing of the Black Lives Matter moniker. It has not always been true in America that Black people were considered to be human beings and subsequently, our lives have not mattered. In many ways, they still don’t. That simply isn’t true for White people. White lives have always mattered. America has always considered White people to be human and by grace, we have too – recognized their humanity, albeit flawed.  This is the heart of the matter.

Structural racism is rooted in Breonna for sale being pedestrian and Amy for sale being unthinkable.

The Black Lives Matter moniker is a declaration to White people for each other. It has to be stated explicitly because they have to overcome a specific American doctrine of their own creation that said that Black lives do not matter. In that sense, Black Lives Matter is not oppositional to the All Lives Matter idea, the relationship is conditional. Once Black Lives Matter, then All Lives will Matter and neither moniker will be necessary.

The success of this moment hinges on White people’s ability to exorcise themselves of the fundamental American sin. What George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks have hopefully done, is disavow White Americans of the idea that America’s original sin is a relic of a bygone era. It is still real and still lingering among us.

The Germans and the Japanese faced total destruction before coming to terms with cultural contrition. If America is as exceptional as we claim it is, perhaps that won’t be necessary. The legions of young White people lifting up the idea that Black Lives Matter gives me hope because in the end, the redemptive burden is theirs.

I already know my life matters.

kamau (@kamaubobb)