January Full Wolf Moon © Astronycc/cosmic_background

I’ll go ahead and say it: black lives don’t matter

Am I to believe that black lives matter when even though people of color make up only about 30 percent of the United States’ population, they account for 60 percent of those imprisoned?

Am I to believe that black lives matter when the United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population today than South Africa did at the height of apartheid?

Am I to believe that black lives matter when black defendants are at least 30% more likely to be imprisoned than white defendants for the same crime?

Am I to believe that black lives matter when African-American women are three times more likely than white women to be incarcerated?

Am I to believe that black lives matter when, in the federal system, black offenders receive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders who commit the same crimes?

Am I to believe that black lives matter when voter laws that disenfranchise people with felony convictions disproportionately impact men of color?

Am I to believe that black lives matter when evidence shows that spending time in prison affects wage trajectories with a disproportionate impact on black men and women?

Am I to believe that black lives matter when defendants accused of killing white women are sentenced to death at nearly 12 times the rate of defendants accused of killing black men and executed at a rate that is 48 times higher?

Do I think black lives matter?  I sure want to believe they do.  I know that black lives matter to me, but the data cannot simply be dismissed.  I don’t share these statistics as a means of simply proving an existing bias so that we can all go on living our lives like there isn’t a problem; to the contrary, I share these to highlight the apparent reality that black lives simply are still not valued equally.  As far as I can tell, the Black Lives Matter name itself establishes a goal that I can’t reasonably say has yet been met given the above statistics.

To me, black lives do matter.  And not because I simply believe all lives matter, but because I especially believe in the rhetoric of “black lives matter.”  I’m not expecting everyone who reads my blog to agree with my Christian beliefs, but I do think we can all look at Jesus Christ’s life and say that this dude was an extremist.  The guy was different!  What did Jesus have to say about specific groups of people?  

I don’t recall ever reading about Jesus giving a sermon instructing folks that “blessed are all you people.”  Jesus knew the impact his words could have by speaking to people on a more personal level.  “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”  Jesus did not make a blanket statement of “love everyone,” but he did focus in on a far more radical message of “love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.”  Jesus did not say “as you do unto everyone, you do to me.”  He instead specifically focused on a group that was marginalized – “the least of these” – in an effort to bring even greater substance to his message.  

The rhetoric behind the Black Lives Matter moniker is key to its message and should serve to highlight how much work there is left to do right now to get to a place where equal justice actually becomes a realization.   Black lives matter to me, but I’m not so sure they could to someone who purely looks at the ongoing racial biases that still exist today. 

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at Sequoyah, Oklahoma

Solange Knowles by  Instagram artist Kyès  

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