We all matter. We are loved by some, by many. This is a given. But when you live in a world that tells you in so many ways that because of who you are, you don’t matter – not as much as another group – you have to have to have to have to have to insist that you are HERE and you mean as much as anyone else. You matter and you deserve basic respect. You matter. I matter. Black Lives Matter and it HURTS that we are subjected to a system that tries to tell us otherwise. It HURTS so bad that some of my skinfolk say to others, “well, if you only just [whatever] you wouldn’t get into trouble.” If we only were just not hued in blackness and brownness. If we only didn’t intimidate the shit out of some others. If only our might did not pose such a threat to the system of white supremacy in which we live. We’d live. Trayvon would live. Tamir would live. Sandra would live. Alton would live.
And if you wonder why Black people celebrate ourselves so much? Why we gotta make statements like “Black Lives Matter” and “Black Girls Rock” and so on? If you truly wonder about these things then you are ignorant to the origin of the country, when we legally were not whole humans, and the legacy this has left us. A legacy where we still, within ourselves, have to make up for being broken down over many generations – a legacy that causes us to have to remind the rest of you too that WE ARE WHOLE DAMN HUMANS AND WE ARE WORTHY OF LOVE AND RESPECT.
Also you might be asleep to the direct meaning of such sentences. Black Lives Matter does not mean that other kinds of lives don’t matter. The statement is only a statement about Black Lives. And Black Lives Matter needs to be said over and over because the way The System’s set up… Black Lives are not treated as if they matter. And all systems, regardless of their goals, are set up to perpetuate itself. And this system started with the premise that those of African descent in this country were not whole human beings.
Systems end only when they are overthrown in some way.
This is part ramble, part rant, part me making a statement on the little bit of a platform that I got. I am not going to be silent about this. Silence to a condition is assent to its existence. I dissent, wholeheartedly, to the assault on my Black brothers and sisters.
I was inspired to write today, as I realize that I follow on social media so many that preach peace and love on their platforms but are quiet as fuck about the atrocities taking place in our country and around the world. My platform is small in reach but it’s mine, so I’m going to use it as much as I can to move something to bring about healing, and the overthrow of a system set up to perpetuate the dismantling of Black lives.
Fist up. Black Lives Matter. I Matter. You Matter.
