As I was taking my morning commute to UMass on Tuesday, I turned onto South Pleasant Street to drive through town and saw a Black Lives Matter banner hanging proudly above passing traffic. I found myself unable to describe what it was that overwhelmed me about seeing this banner as I drove underneath it, but I felt myself tearing up at the sight of it.
For the rest of my drive, I thought about the significance of this and the things a lot of people I knew would criticize about it. Since its founding, the Black Lives Matter movement has been refuted with the idea that “All Lives Matter,” to which people like me have responded that while this is true, we live in a society where minorities have clearly not been treated equally.
I thought for a second that maybe the movement could be better revised to say “Black Lives Matter, Too,” to explain to refuters what I have argued continuously. But I immediately retracted that thought as it’s irrelevant to the controversy. The rationale behind my retraction was simple: Black lives and minority lives have been treated as an afterthought even in a supposed “post-racial” world.
Adding the word “too” to the group’s fight against institutional racism only self-appoints them as an “and” – an addition to the white population rather than a part of “All Lives” that their opposition claims matter. In an even simpler format, this movement is not, and will never be, about me. Who am I to think that the leaders of this movement should change their slogan just to accommodate the white oppressors they are fighting against in the first place?
In a more local light, I am proud. The banner I will now see every day on my drive is a signifier of a town that cares about the lives oppressed in America. I’m not a woman of color and I haven’t personally fallen victim of the oppressions minorities face on a daily basis, but I am overwhelmed with a sense of pride that the town I spend my time in is working to embody the same values that I have been aiming to instill in some of my family members and friends for months on end.
The Black Lives Matter movement is an organization I have supported since its establishment, and I have been increasingly discouraged trying to explain racial inequality as a white woman to another group of white individuals. By seeing this banner Tuesday morning, I recognized two main feelings.
The first of these feelings was pretty obvious: I am not even remotely close to understanding the injustices people of color face in America. I have no anecdotal evidence to provide to those who I talk to about racial issues and I will never experience the struggles people of color have just by being people of color.
I do, however, recognize my own privilege. I notice the privileges I have over my fellow community members of color and people I have interacted with my entire life. By harnessing this privilege, I hope I can channel it to fight white supremacy. I hope I can one day contribute to a change in society and raise a family that is not colorblind but instead sees past racial differences and prejudices to create a community of racial equality.
I might not be able to change someone’s mind today, but maybe I’ll learn how to approach people who are not willing to change their warped perception that Americans are all equal and work with them to not only change policies but to foster a newer society that listens more to the minority public about racial struggle than those who govern them and speak on their behalf.
The second feeling that overtook me that morning was more of a reinforcement that Amherst has taken a stand against racial inequality. I may know infinitely less than people of color, and this may be just a banner, but it is a banner that tells all that Amherst is not standing for the racism and discrimination that has plagued our country since its founding.
This town has announced that it is capable of fighting against prejudice, racial slurs, mass incarceration and all the acts of violence that people of color are susceptible to in America. Although this is only one small step that is a fraction of necessary change toward racial equality, I am proud to be a student in a community that embraces and takes concern in the lives of minorities.
Karly Dunn can be reached at [email protected].
David Hunt 1990 • Mar 31, 2016 at 11:28 am
@Tamilon: With > 90% of black murder victims being killed by other blacks, IMHO the furor over whites killing blacks – while absolutely not a good thing! – is a relatively small issue.
Tamilon • Mar 30, 2016 at 10:18 am
A Manhattan judge on Tuesday lashed into a Harlem man convicted of attempted murder — telling him that “black lives don’t matter to black people with guns” before tossing him in prison for 24 to 26 years.
Modal Trigger
Justice Edward McLaughlin leaves a Manhattan court building in 2015.Photo: Chad Rachman
“Black lives matter,” Justice Edward McLaughlin told defendant Tareek Arnold, 24, as he sentenced him in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“I have heard it, I know it, but the sad fact is in this courtroom, so often what happens is manifestations of the fact that black lives don’t matter to black people with guns.”
David Hunt 1990 • Mar 25, 2016 at 7:15 am
@David Farrar: Of course it exists. It’s sad, but it does. Then again, there are still people who think Elvis is alive.
The “n word” used to be openly stated. Now it’s not. We have a black man as President, something unthinkable even 30 years ago. We have minorities of all types advancing in society, and that’s a good thing. We’re getting better.
But one cannot say, on one hand, “Treat me the same” while the other hand says “Treat me differently”.
As a parent of bi-racial children, I do sometimes worry about my kids. But better here in America than virtually any other place.
David Hunt 1990 • Mar 24, 2016 at 3:30 pm
Martin Luthor King Jr. dreamed of a world where we would judge individuals by the content of their character. An admirable and wonderful dream.
Instead we have people casting that aside, demanding to be judged by the color of their skin, and preferentially placing one race as more important than another.
MLK Jr. is spinning in his grave.
#alllivesmatter
David Farrar • Mar 24, 2016 at 3:27 pm
I think racism does exist. It is endemic in all races.Only positive law, supporting the equality of all, can it be confronted peaceably.
Haviland • Mar 24, 2016 at 12:00 pm
This reminds me of when the Amherst town council wasted its time declaring it to be a “nuclear free zone” in the 1990s or so. Maybe the resolution even outlawed nuclear war within its borders. Those kooky town elders – what a hoot! Council meetings are like a comedy show at the Hatch.
It looks like the ceaseless propaganda being fed to generations of UMASS students is alive and well and taking root. I thought most of the hippies had died out our bought BMW’s by now. Apparently in Amherst you can teach radical propaganda and STILL safely enjoy the material trappings of capitalism!
Maybe a few years of working 50-80 hours a week and paying seemingly limitless taxes that are redistributed to the “unprivileged” society at large will inform your thinking a bit on this topic.
Chavez • Mar 24, 2016 at 10:56 am
A few perhaps salient points:
1) Race doesn’t exist. It is a social fiction, imposed artificially on the human species.
2 ) When people accept an identity for themselves based on their external coloration, they begin to define themselves according to false criteria.
3) Persons who accept a group identity must surrender their individual identity to the group — and hence, they submit to the demands of false criteria and deny the actual reality of their individual personality.
3) “Racism” requires not only one group identity, but at least two: if black people must be defined as black, then white people must accept an identity as white (otherwise, the first condition fails)
4) Hence, accepting a group identity requires that others also be defined by a group.
5) But as is seen, the entire construct is based on false criteria.
6) “Racism” ends when it is realized that “race” is no more determinative than hair color, height, weight,
or any other permutation of the human species. Identity, or “personhood”, consists of more than any of these, or all of them put together; and is in fact quite independent of any of them. The “person” exists; “groups” do not.
7) Hence, “black lives matter” is inherently incorrect, in that it compels membership in identity groups. Better, then, that “lives matter”; or “Bill and Tom and Sally and Betty” matter. But not “____ (insert ‘racial’ category) lives matter”, which is not only misleading as to the nature of humans, but also dividing, and hence counter-productive to its intended purpose.
snafubar • Mar 24, 2016 at 10:28 am
So Karly, will you be surrendering to your “white privilege”, and give up your place as a student at UMASS so that an underprivileged minority can get a college education? Put your money where your mouth is.