Black Lives Matter Explained For White People By A White Person
“Spring irises bloom.
The caged bird no longer sings—
the knee on his throat.”
I am not black. I have not faced persecution in my life based on the color of my skin. When I’ve gotten pulled over by the police, I quickly strategize how to talk my way out of it, or—my worst case scenario—how I’ll afford a ticket price. I do not fear for my life. I do not start recording. I know I am not in danger. This is something that is considered a privilege by the black community, but considered normal for every other race to an extent—full privilege is achieved within the white community. It’s a privilege that, no matter how hard they may try, the American institution does not grant black people. It’s a privilege that should not even be considered a privilege at all because there should not be some inherent disadvantage based off of the color of your skin in life. Yet, here we are.
George Floyd. Source: ABC13 Houston
George Floyd was a father. He was healthy. He was doing well. He is only one of many black fathers, of many black sons, of many black mothers and daughters, to have died at the hands of state-sanctioned violence. He is one of few whose perpetrator, whose murderer, was apprehended—and not even to the fullest extent of the law. George Floyd died with a knee on his neck, shouting that he couldn’t breathe. Not for seconds. For minutes. Why? An employee, following store protocol, called into the police that Floyd may have been using a counterfeit twenty dollar bill.
Who is going to tell George Floyd’s daughter that a white police officer with a history of seventeen complaints of misconduct and derogatory language use murdered her father?
Who told her that her father wasn’t coming home? Who told her that he didn’t deserve to die? Will she believe that? Will she ever be able to believe that the color of his skin, the color of her skin, isn’t a death sentence?
George Floyd’s daughter isn’t the only person who has had to face these questions and then look into the mirror and ask herself why society won’t love her back. For black men and boys, 1 in 1,000 can expect to die at the hands of the police, making them 2.5 times more likely to die by police brutality than white men and boys. If this statistic is shocking to you, then let it be a wake-up call.
Source: Mapping Police Violence
There are many outraged folks right now, about the fires, about the protests, about the looting, about the fear-fueled rage directed toward the police force by protestors. This outrage about these issues seem to be primarily coming from, well, either white people or people associated with the police. Let me help you understand the logic behind this all—from one white person to the next.
To the people in blue, and the wives and daughters and husbands and sons of the people in blue, I understand your fear and anger right now. You feel as though you are under siege. You feel as though you signed up to protect the citizens of this nation, and now there are stones being cast your way for a job you chose to do. I can understand that. However, have you asked yourself why your anger is directed at protestors and not the very institution the protestors are angry with? Have you considered that while you may be a good person who happens to be a police officer, there are plenty of bad people who are police officers too? Have you reminded yourself that while you may consider yourself good, or noble even, the institution you work for was founded in slavery?
It is true that not all people who are cops are bad. And, I say “people who are cops” to reinstill the humanity of this situation. Take a moment to consider the quote circulating Twitter right now: “If there are 1,000 good cops, and 10 bad cops, and the 1,000 good cops do nothing to weed out the 10 bad cops, then there are 1,010 bad cops.”
This quote curtly explains the outrage of the black community and their anger toward the police force. And to all the good people who are cops—you can be a good person, but still not be doing enough. It is not one good cop’s fault that they alone cannot internally dismantle a system that was created as broken, but it is a good police force’s fault for not imposing justice upon faulty forces that they see. We can see change happen vividly in a video during a Seattle police brutality protest in which a white protestor was being detained by two police officers, and one officer put his knee on the neck of the protestor. The second officer moved his knee in under ten seconds. Imagine—those ten seconds could have saved George Floyd’s life.
It is hard to watch extrajudicial murder be essentially accepted by part of society when it results in a black person’s death while heinous crimes committed by white people are frequently swept under the rug. An example of this white privilege at its absolute finest can be found within the case of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring in which he evaded justice for decades. Even when he was caught the first time in the early 2000s, U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta cut him a sweetheart deal. It took another decade for a good judge to really nail him down. We should also consider Brock Turner spending only six months in prison after raping Chanel Miller and leaving her for dead in a dumpster. This same logic can be applied to the police force.
We need the good people who are officers to stand up. We need the good people in law enforcement to stand with protestors. We need the good people who are cops to take responsibility for the bad people who are cops by assuring they are apprehended. We need to see, with continued action, that they care.
The fires, the looting, the graffiti; these are mostly not the act of protestors. Plenty of people who have attended protests (who shall remain nameless) have claimed that when they attended the BLM protests, they were peaceful. It’s often once protestors begin leaving that looters and rioters, who were not at the protest, begin to show up to agitate the situation. In the same way that you plead with us that not all cops are bad, we plead with you that not all protestors are bad.
There may be some protestors who are engaging in looting and rioting and vandalism, but these actions are not “coming out of nowhere,” as many who choose willful ignorance will try to claim. These are actions rooted in the oppression that has lasted centuries now. These are symbols of anger, of distrust, of exhaustion. These are the expressions of a collective that is done trying to reason with people who will not even pretend to listen. This has been coming. There were names before George Floyd: Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, and so many more. The police are tired of the protests? They want to go home to their families? So do hundreds of black Americans that will never make it home. It is time to listen.
Source: Refinery29
Protests are a language of peace and reason. Riots are the language of the unheard, the beaten and oppressed. Everyone who believes in human rights, in the right for black people to be heard and seen equally by not only governmental institutions, but their neighbors, their coworkers, everyone—those people are out risking their lives to protest for that simple right. Something so simple… It makes you think, why is it so difficult for that call to be answered? How is it so difficult for police to not engage in police brutality at police brutality protests? How, in all of this, with so much of our history ingrained into our minds like a broken record we cannot turn off, can they forget? How can they not understand?
Blackness is coded with negative imagery. Why? Slavery. In fact, any question you have about why black people are treated differently than every other race, the answer is likely slavery. Even a peculiar musing that may strike you on your walk through Wall Street, like what history that sidewalk may have? Slavery. Wall Street was literally built on a burial site for African slaves. America was built on African slaves backs. The generational wealth so many people have—it was catalyzed through slaves. Everything we know today, an enslaved black person likely touched.
Knowing that, and I think this is fairly safe to say—we all do know this to some extent—we can now see how blackness is handled by the government. In the wake of the pandemic, a predominant white demographic of people launched protests to go back to work, to “return to normal.” These protests escalated into white protestors choosing to cough in police officers' faces as a (potentially life-threatening) symbol of vitriol and anger about state-imposed confinement meant to help us all stay safe and healthy. Yet, the police did not flinch. President Donald Trump jumped to Twitter to claim that these were “very good people” and that a deal should be worked out between the protestors and the states.
Now, we see the protests about police brutality against black Americans in action. We see, so clearly, how these have normally started peacefully until the police arrive. Then, there is violence. There are children getting tear gassed in the street, wooden and rubber bullets taking out people’s eyes, tasers being deployed upon protestors, and—most heinously—protestors being detained by police, even held down by the neck with an ever-present police-uniformed knee. President Trump’s Twitter reaction? Calling the protestors, who are predominantly a black demographic, “thugs” and threatening to release “vicious dogs” on them. Vicious dogs. This is a threat to return to the state of America (that President Trump clearly misses) in which dogs were used to maintain colonization and black chattel slavery in America.
Another quote with historically racist ties that came from President Trump’s Twitter fingers: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Not only is that a direct threat of violence from the President of the United States to his citizens, but it can be dated back to the civil rights era in which it was first used by Miami Chief of Police Walter Headley, who was well-known for being explicitly and proudly racist, when throwing down the hammer on protests. Mr. President is truly showing his cards here, isn’t he?
A sweet reminder: While President Trump outwardly attempts to condemn and prevent protestors for invoking their constitutional right to protest, George Floyd’s killer, Derek Chauvin, has been presented with new charges. What was once considered third-degree murder is now second-degree murder. Along with that, the three other officers present during the murder are now facing new charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder. All of these new charges were presented after nearly a week of protesting in all fifty states. That is why we fight. That is why we protest and why we demand justice from those who are too cowardly to deliver it in the first place.
Source: Twitter
I am not black. The only persecution I have ever faced is that of being a woman, being spoken over, being seen for the wrong things, and being so loud only for my screams to hit a brick wall. I know what it is to feel angry, to feel unheard, to feel like my worth was predetermined at birth and defined by a system I oppose. But, even still, I will never know the black struggle. I will only know that it runs blood-deep; it is almost ancient, and putting myself as best as I can into the shoes of black bodies, I know I would light things on fire. I would yell. I would cry. I would not be okay with continually and habitually seeing people who look like me be murdered by those who swear an oath to protect and serve me.
I can’t feel the black struggle on a fundamental level because I am not them, but that is why I stand with them. And, I stand with George Floyd. And Sandra Bland. And Michael Brown. And Eric Garner. And Breonna Taylor. And Trayvon Martin. And all of the other names that we must start knowing by memory, and the innocent act of us not knowing every single name that died by the hands of police brutality is only a testament to how truly horrific and commonplace the way they’ve died has become.
I stand with them to support them. I, along with so many other non-black allies, want to be the muscle to this movement, the cushion to the falls that may come, and the armor every warrior must have. White support is as simple as shielding a black protestor when the police begin to get violent. White support is speaking to your other white and non-black friends and family members to remind them that only we have the privilege to turn away, which is why we must not. To be “not racist” is no longer enough, and if I’m being honest, it was never really cutting it to begin with. We must all engage in anti-racism, in being angry alongside our black comrades, in amplifying them and protecting them. We have failed them for so long—it is time to do our part. It’s overdue, frankly.
In the name of good housekeeping, here is a compiled list of the best organizations you can donate some of your unemployment checks to for the sake of the Black Lives Matter movement:
To donate to the George Floyd Memorial Fund, click here. This fund is the official GoFundMe to support the Floyd family.
To donate to the Black Visions Fund, click here. This fund is a black, trans and queer-led organization that’s committed to dismantling systems of oppression and violence, and aims to shift the public narrative to create a transformative, long-term change.
To donate to Reclaim the Block, click here. Donating to this coalition will allow you to advocate and invest in community-led safety initiatives in Minneapolis neighborhoods.
To donate to Campaign Zero, click here. This is an online platform and organization that utilizes research-based policy solutions to end police brutality in America.
To donate to Unicorn Riot, click here. This is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to exposing root causes of dynamic social and environmental issues.
To see a list of black-owned businesses you can buy from and support, you can visit the Lexington Line instagram page, or read Beauty Director Michelle Brunson’s article on 25 black-owned businesses to buy from—now and forever.
There is no longer an excuse to not amplify, support and protect the black community. We should all be angry, whether we are white lives, yellow lives, black lives, brown lives, even blue lives—especially blue lives. The world doesn’t change without all of us coming together, and as “Kumbaya” as that sounds, it’s true. We must redirect our anger at those who pit us against each other in the name of power and control.
Black Lives Matter.