We All Matter

Black lives matter.

Do you cringe when you hear that?  Do you want to automatically snap back, "No! All lives matter!"  Or defensively shout, "Police lives matter!"

Well, you know what?  All lives do matter.  And especially in the wake of the  brutal killings in Dallas, who would not say that police lives matter?

As I write this, the Dallas situation is still in flux, and not all facts are known.  But what is clear is this - police were deliberately targeted.  And that is never justified, for any reason.

Rallies were held throughout the country, virtually everyone of them peaceful and incident free.  That was true in Dallas as well.  The outside sniper(s) were not part of the peaceful rally.  They came from outside of it.  Everyone in the rally, police and civilian alike, was horrified by what was happening.  And police officers, not knowing what was going on, rushed to aid the civilian protesters,  because for the overwhelming number of cops in this country, their instincts are to preserve and protect.  They know that every citizen is important, that every single life matters.

And yet....

There is warrant and purpose behind the phrase black lives matter. They are being killed at a higher rate than other ethnic groups.  They are being killed in situations that, clearly, if they were white, they would not be.    They are not being given the benefit of the doubt, and reactions to them are crueler and swifter,  It is clear to me that open carry and having a gun is a right only reserved for white people.  I'm supposed to be okay with a white person carrying a semi-automatic rifle into Walmart, but then call the police in if I see a black man with what turns out to be a toy gun.

Frankly, our whole culture is partly dependent on the idea that some lives matter less than others.  We operate within our set clan or clans and are more concerned with that than other outsiders. When a terrorist incident happens in Paris, all our facebook profiles are enshrouded in a French flag,  When a bombing happens in Istanbul or Baghdad,  and the attack kills mostly kills Muslims, we barely hear a blip.  Did I see facebook profiles covered with the flags of Turkey, Iraq or Bangladesh?  No, I did not.

Our international economic system is based on the idea that it is A-okay that some cultures or groups get paid significantly less in order to provide goods for the more well-off.  it matters not a whit to us that most of our goods are put together by people who may be paid only pennies an hour.  Because their lives are simply not as important as our own.

You can see it in the response to the killings of African Americans.  They wouldn't have been killed if they would've cooperated better.  They have a criminal record.  There is more black on black crime, and killing in urban centers, so why are we concentrated on this?  And on and on it goes.

But it keeps happening.  Over and over again.  Ant it doesn't seem to matter whether they cooperate or not, whether they have a record or not, whether they're dressed well or not.

The great religions and philosophies all teach the same thing - everyone matters, friend and foe alike.  Immigration is okay, but it's not okay to bring people in at substandard wages.  It is not okay that one group's median wealth is so much lower than others.  When one of us bleeds, all of us bleeds.

Hate is not the answer.  Fear is not the answer.  Indifference is not the answer.  You can accomplish more through love than hate.  Just ask the parishioners of  Emanuel AME church in Charleston, who accomplished more through love and forgiveness than would have ever been possible with hate and vengeance.  The shooting of the Dallas police officers makes things infinitely worse.

When the phrase black lives matter is used, it is not to supplant or supersede the idea that all lives matter.  It is to emphasize it's equality with that concept, that black lives matter as much as any other.

When I hear people complain and fuss about black lives matter, it makes me cringe.  They don't understand what they're saying.  They're not saying that black lives matter more than others.  They're saying they should matter the same.

Because in the end, we will not survive as a country or a planet if we do not understand this -

WE ALL MATTER.