Over the weekend, after my friend and I had watched Deadpool, we sat around discussing the current affairs of the world. At some point he asked me what I thought of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, and I went on a rant. The following are the basic concepts of what I said.
When the movement started I had the same comment that many in the white community had, that being of “all lives matter.” But I quickly, when I had time to truly think on it, knew that BLM did not mean that other lives didn’t matter, it just meant that black lives are something to protect in the same way that every life is protected.
Even with that said, I understood where other people were coming from when they said that All Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter. But my tolerance of these groups disappeared completely by something I saw on Facebook.
I’ve been trying to find the exact meme/post, by some police union page, that I saw on Facebook, but I haven’t been able to. I came close enough though with this example from policetees.com.
I hope you are all aware that this image is attempting to say that a dog’s life is as important as a black man’s life!!! This idea that any dog’s life matters more than or equal to a black human life is pure racist reactionary totalitarian crap! No animal’s life is equal to a human life! Let me repeat that. NO ANIMAL’S LIFE IS EQUAL TO A HUMAN LIFE!!
While this sort of thinking is bad enough when a civilian believes it, it is even worse when law enforcement believes it, or thinks it is funny to equate a dog to a black man. By dehumanizing anyone that is black, it makes easier to use a gun to stop a “suspect.” It also shows that there is a real problem in our police force, and it’s gotten so bad that we are sending our law enforcement to Scotland to learn how to calm a situation without lethal force.
I know that we need police, and they provide a needed service.
However, we need to ensure that the police are held accountable for their actions, and we need to stop the idea that a cops judgment has to be trusted by the courts, above anything else. We must use forensic proof, not a feeling of danger that the police union felt after the fact to decide if the cop was at fault. We are no longer in the age where an attack on the king’s man is considered an attack on the king himself. If our democratic republic is not strong enough for everyone to be held accountable for their actions, then we need to change it to make it strong enough.
This is why black lives matter, and why I agree with this portion of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Black Live Matter Photo: Tony Webster
tony@tonywebster.com
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/