So one of the more incredible things I can remember from the pandemic was the creation the Black Lives Matter plaza in Washington DC. I felt it’s creation captured a moment in time when a national community was in pain and wanted to be seen and heard and felt and not just included but accepted by their fellow Americans as human beings. I was all but certain that it would become part of our living National story and preserved, but it is currently being wiped off the face of the planet.
But back in time, rather than use the opportunity to embrace the assertion that Black Lives Matter, politicians and pundits took the movement as an opportunity to reject a sizable portion of our citizenry, fellow Americans who were in pain, in a moment of power yet vulnerability and used cutesy little catch phrases like “All Lives Matter” as a talking point to cruelly isolate, minimize and degrade parts of our Nation who just want to live their lives with the same promise of freedom that everyone else has. Every decent human being on the planet who heard George Flyod cry out for his mother as he lay on the ground dying had their heart broken when they saw it. My heart hurts just thinking about it.
If you believe in Human Rights, you believe that everyone on this planet should have the same basic access to human dignity and respect. In other respects, human beings should be able to move across this earth with full freedom and mobility, unmolested with the expectation of safety, respect and security as they do so, particularly from the institutions that serve our great nation and this is regardless of how society labels you as a human being. And if you don’t expect that for all of your fellow citizens let alone all the living human beings on this Earth, I ask you, what are your expectations of their rights, what are you willing to offer others in terms of humanizing them, giving them charitable empathy.
Why would you choose not to look upon others with the basic heartful sense of dignity and respect all human beings should be entitled to. When you run into another human being on the street and that person has done nothing to degrade you, restrict your movement or harm you, shouldn’t you reasonably have the expectation that this person is worthy? Why should that be any different for anyone else living in or part of another community, particularly people you don’t know?
I can tell you in my several decades in life creating bias is only useful to control or restrict populations. Creating bias is often simply a means to another end. When a group of politicians minimize a group, it is to promote factionalism and it’s usually to create a means to accomplish multiple goals in the name of the fight. I think the largest group affected by these attacks on DEI are women, and I think that is the largest thrust of this movement. For sure, other groups are being hurt and affected by this, but the largest strategic gain here is a degradation of rights for women. And it affects all groups. And DEI also protects the majority too.
People often say you can’t discriminate against white people, but you can. That’s just like saying you can’t be sexist over men or use your position and authority over a subordinate male to compromise their sense of dignity, autonomy and respect. I’ve been sexually harassed on the job. I had a stalker at work. I’ve had my intelligence minimized and questioned by a female superior before on more than one occasion. Up until recently, I had a female friend who after a time I realized would expect the worst of me, minimize my ideas and opinions at every opportunity and the worst part is I couldn’t figure out if it was because I was male, a minority, both or something else. Brendan Fraiser who I always pictured as a manly man suffered from unwanted interactions with someone who was in a position of power in Hollywood. Theoretically speaking, DEI is supposed to protect all people from that. And frankly, so called white populations have known discrimination and hate directed at them or at one another.
I don’t like how people talk about people of differing political views though I admit sometimes it’s hard not to join in. I think it’s fair to speak truth against a movement, but we’ve become a society where movements have been blanket statements of meaning for people when in reality both Democrats and Republicans run a spectrum. It varies by region of course, but this blanketing of people in easy to use labels has to stop. Because we are all human beings here and yes All Lives Matter, but that also means Black Lives Matter too. All Lives Matter should never have been a dismissive statement, it should have been a welcome. It should have been an assertion that African Americans belong with everyone else in our grand experiment, that when we say We The People in the context of these modern days, we mean it. But deep down, I think most people who cried out All Lives Matter did so without the intentionality of the ones who cried Black Lives Matter and did so as a repudiation against a population who wanted to be seen, heard and accepted. And if you believe that we were all put on this earth, endowed by our Creator, the Universe, one another, by society with certain inalienable rights, you also have to believe that no one on this planet should have to ask for acceptance, for dignity and respect. Everyone should already have it.
And I’m someone who most times would argue against binary thinking about ideas and thoughts, but I would say this is either something you believe in or you don’t. And if you don’t, if you don’t believe that Black Lives Matter, or that anyone else’s do, why not? What’s the excuse in not believing in human rights and dignity as a Universal Truth?