The Soft Bigotry of All Lives Matter

Bigotry can be defined as the inability or more accurately the unwillingness to update one’s beliefs even given new information. This can be applied to anything - not just race. If you asked white people why they can’t say Black Lives Matter, I’d bet they’d bombard you with tried and true tropes like, “I don’t see color” or “what about Black-on-Black crime”. They’d never peg themselves a racist - and in many cases they’re right.

Racism takes race-based bigotry to the next level by systematically oppressing individuals of opposing race(s). The inconvenient 7RUTH is most white people don’t have that kind of power over our lives without weaponizing police a la Amy Cooper.

When real racists say All Lives Matter, it’s because they believe we are here to make their lives...matter. In their minds, we exist merely to enrich them with our talent and labor, cook for them, and entertain them. You remember shut up and dribble. Any accomplishments we attain in excess of their expectations of us should be accepted with a gratitude devoid of any threat of uprising, especially not in the form of standing up for the conditions of the oppressed.

Our thoughts, feelings, needs, and wants exist entirely within the confines of their comfort - that is their thoughts, feelings, needs, and wants. You are to be seen and not heard unless acknowledged by one of them. All lives matter is a shorthand way of saying our lives don’t matter outside of theirs.

Benign Neglect: The Father of Black Lives Matter

Many of the people who proclaim All Lives Matter are merely maintaining a bigoted state of willful ignorance underscored by a covert system of benign neglect. First instituted by liberal Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in partnership with Richard Nixon, its goal was to quell the momentum of the Civil Rights Movement by ignoring issues of race. Much like Sally Hemings’ descendants shook the Jefferson family tree, the Black Lives Matter movement continues to disturb America’s negative peace.

Still, much of liberal white America believes it is their job to decide what progress Blacks make and how much is too much. For them, All Lives Matter is akin to using minority, diverse, or people of color as a replacement for Black when discussing issues predominantly experienced by Black people.

Unfortunately, some Black people engage in this tactic so as to make themselves more palatable for assimilation. As far as I’m concerned, we need to stop trying to convince folk we matter and just do us. But, what does that even look like?

Black Lives Matter: The 99th Anniversary of the Tulsa, OK Race Riot

May 31, 2020 marked the 99th anniversary of the race riot in Tulsa, OK where Black businesses, homes, and families were besieged by mobs of white people seeking blood for, on the surface, a false allegation and a white man killed in defense of the accused.

The angry white mob looted, burned, and terrorized the Greenwood District for two consecutive days. A heinous miscarriage of justice as it would have been, they could have just lynched Dick Rowland - the accused, and his protector in front of everyone. What made them destroy the entire community?

When Emmett Till was falsely accused of whistling at a white woman, they brutalized and murdered him without terrorizing the whole town - because the Black people of Money, MS at that time were nowhere near as uppity as those of Greenwood some 34 years earlier. They knew their place. 

Economic Equity as a Mechanism for Social Justice

Too often we view economic equity as a noble destination of social justice when the reality is opposite. Economic equity is the lone road we must travel, picking up other social justice objectives along the way. Deep-seated jealousy was at the core of the white mob’s collective psyche in Greenwood. Owning their own churches, schools, banks, hospitals, newspapers, movie theaters, etc., the Black Wall Street community was economically self-sufficient.

The poor and middle-class white mob’s jealousy was rooted in Black people having too meaningful of an existence without them. In essence, Black Wall Street was proof positive that Black Lives Matter while also proving how little their white lives mattered without having Black folk to financially exploit and serve them. Black ownership and economic empowerment is the biggest threat to white supremacy.

George Floyd is the Emmett Till of Our Time

In September of 1955, Mamie Till decided to open the casket for Emmett’s funeral, literally making him the face of white supremacy broadcast through traditional media for all the world to see. Thus, the Civil Rights Movement as we know it was born. For better or worse, smartphones with powerful cameras, the mobile internet, and social media have made us all journalists exposing injustices and keeping us updated by the minute.

Fast forward to Monday May 25th 2020, Derek Chauvin and his cohorts decided, at once, to choke the life out of George Floyd - who could be heard calling for his deceased mother in a last dying decree - and breathe life into an already burgeoning 21st century Civil Rights Movement giving birth to voices from new participants who previously stood behind the same thin blue line as they.

Armed with a boldness that can only be explained by his ability to avert reprimand for most of the infractions on his record and the cornerstone of police brutality that is qualified immunity, he put his hands in his pockets, his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck, and held it there for over eight minutes all while looking directly into smartphone cameras.

It was just another day at the office for him and his crew. But, they would soon find out the entire world had grown weary of watching the likes of Philando Castille and Eric Garner be murdered on candid camera. We had all seen enough.

George Floyd’s Death and the Birth of a Movement

The good news is the egregious nature of willful ignorance is itself being highlighted as injustice. Corporate America has finally decided that silence is no longer an option. Hell, even the NFL is trying to moonwalk its way to the right sight of history.

Moreover, the speed with which injustices are brought to light is as astounding as it is infectious. Spreading even faster than COVID-19, it’s inspiring Iran, Britain, Germany, New Zealand, France, and many other countries to join the chorus denouncing systemic racism.

The bad news is the consistency of traumatic images broadcast could lead people who’d otherwise be engaged in the struggle to defect as a means of self-care, and rightfully so. Donteacia Seymore, in the following clip, discusses why the Sandra Bland case drove her to leave the country.