06/10/2020
The words Black Lives Matter are not controversial. They are a fact. And we know the words themselves are not enough. We must do the work within and without to reform society to a place where this fact is reflected in all aspects of our lives. Black lives matter. But there is more: Black Aspirations Matter. Black Dreams Matter. Black Health Matters. Black Wealth Matters. Black Talent Matters. Black Opportunity Matters. Black Voices Matter. Black Justice Matters. Black Representation Matters. Black History Matters. Black Exhaustion Matters. Black Pain Matters. Black Beauty Matters. Black Communities Matter. And on and on.
As educators and parents, we must use our voices and areas of influence for social justice.
I am a middle aged white woman who was raised as a child and teenager in the Black community. I began middle school in the 1970s. That summer, Roots played on the televisions across America. My sister and I, plus one other white girl, were the only three non-African-American children at Marcus Foster Middle School in Oakland that year. I had a lot of explaining to do on the playground, I can assure you. Later, in my early teens and well into adulthood, I was taken into an extended black family. I was raised in an almost solely Black neighborhood through the Reagan years when money was being pulled out of communities of color in favor of trickle down economics. I have experiences and understanding of African-American lives and love and power in my bones, while I benefit from the white skin privilege of my skin.
At this time, I again am learning so much listening to the dynamic, angry, articulate, educated, determined, powerful Black voices teach us and preach to us what it is to live in a system designed to maintain covert and overt white supremacy. These voices, tired though they are, are laying out the nuance, the complexity, the history, the interconnections that rob people of color of humanity, power, safety, voice, representation, respect, opportunity. On and on.
May we all listen. May those of us with white skin let down our walls of defensiveness, willful denial, and ingrained perspectives, so we can play a positive part in this profound reckoning centuries in the making.
Ta-Nehisi Coates makes the case in Between the World and Me that the burden for ending racism must land squarely on white people because it emanates from our actions and systems. Currently, that is not where the burden is landing. But we can also see that there is something different happening, an opening, a recognition that hasn't happened before. Perhaps we are understanding that white people have to get ourselves educated enough, compassionate enough, committed enough, open enough, secure enough to begin to take steps that make the situation better for POC, not worse with uninformed good intentions, denial of realities we don't experience, or by turning away. We need to get it together. Because Black Lives Matter. Black Lives are Precious.
