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Black Lives Must Matter Before All Lives Matter
I have kept relatively quiet on social media regarding everything going on right now. The reason for this is simple and selfish: I don’t want to say the wrong thing and come off as uninformed, wrong, privileged, or racist.
But I realize that anyone with even a small platform has a responsibility to address important subjects.
The first thing I must say is that I absolutely recognize my privilege. As a white middle-class woman in the U.S., I am privileged in a way that people of color in the U.S. are not.
I don’t have to fear the police in the same way as people of color. My parents never gave me a talk about how to respond to cops and always have my hands visible. I’ve rarely faced discrimination for the color of my skin, though I have faced discrimination based on age, gender, and religion (I’m Jewish). But it is not the same.
In the United States, white men are overwhelmingly more likely to commit terrorist acts like mass shootings, yet the politicians and police are loath to call white mass shooters “terrorists.” And unfortunately, white men are also the ones overwhelmingly making laws and enforcing rules. Yet Black Americans are 2.5 times more likely than white people to be killed by the police. (Statista)
