Black Lives Matter & White Privilege: Liberty, Justice, & What It Means to Be American (VIDEO)
*Four minute video + transcription below.*
It’s Blackout Tuesday and I’m sure you’ve noticed your social media feeds are full of blacked-out photos from your friends and family supporting the #BlackLivesMatter movement. But I bet you also have some friends and family that are leaning towards the other end of that spectrum, having a hard time condoning all the violence, vandalism, and general chaos that’s going on in the country right now.
So I thought I would share an important anecdote that kinda meets everyone in the middle. But it harps on some important themes of life, liberty, justice, privilege, and what it means to be an American.
In college I had a professor a Quaker professor. They, essentially believe in nonviolence… Anyway, he was very influential in my life, and I personally have a hard time understanding or justifying violence in almost any capacity. So in his courses, we studied MLK and Gandhi — and all kinds of advocates for nonviolent protesting. I loved the precedent they set. I lived for their ideals.
But, BUT, that is because I have been privileged my entire life to have a world where "law and order" and "justice" —they’re typically on my side, working for me. So of course I can look at unlawful vandalism and violence and think of it as barbaric and unfathomable. And of course I think we as a species should have evolved beyond this by now because we are capable of dealing with things differently. But I know that I’m ONLY able to think like this because, through my "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" aren’t systemically infringed upon.
So I have been empowered to live a life where I’m free and I don’t even have to think about resorting to any unlawful acts or violence. Because of the country I was born in and the color of my skin, I've bee able to take these rights and liberties for granted. And more than just that, I've been granted opportunities and leniency that allow me to live this life of comfortable “violence-condemning” privilege. And it is a privilege to even be able to condemn violence.
And I know that’s hard for many people to wrap their minds around… But just think about the basic things…
Even something as mild as a traffic violation... if I get pulled over, there's about a 1/5 chance I'll get ticketed regardless of if I’m breaking the law. And then when I’m jogging, I mean, my biggest fears while jogging are catcalling or twisting an ankle -- not losing my life and leaving my child motherless. I know that I am privileged in ways that I can't understand because I've never had basic human privileges stripped from me.
But I DO understand how lucky I am. And I know that I’m lucky to be raising a son who, like me, will undoubtedly never have to live in fear — knowing "law and order" and "justice" is on his side. He won't know the fear and anger that can consume communities left behind... left out of this "privileged" life where law, order, and justice do prevail.
If we want peaceful law and order for ourselves and our families, we have to grant it to EVERYONE and everyone’s families. Until then, no one can actually live in peace. These protests and these riots are the case-in-point.
The riots are not the problem. Innocent people dying because of the color of their skin — that is the problem. The riots are a last-resort response to a problem that has been ignored for far, far too long.
So yes, the problem is convoluted and it goes back generations. But the solution is simple. It's something we all agreed on over 128 years years ago, and something we teach 5-year-olds to memorize for life. We can only become a truly undivided nation when there is liberty and justice for ALL. Period.
