When you preference the words “Lives Matter” by further defining the phrase or jump on any one of the many ‘band wagons for equality’, you are not you’re not taking a stand against racism and inequality, you’re perpetuating it.
Thoughts of “Well, why don’t (fill in the blank with anything) lives matter?” “Why does their life matter more than anyone else’s?” It puts people of any other race or gender on the defensive because, in theory, every life should matter; but to somebody, and most everybody, it matters conditionally.
Scientists save human lives but experiment with the life of the animals.
To those with arachnophobia, life matters as long as it has less than eight legs.
To the farmer, life matters until slaughter or harvest time.
To the land developers, life matters as long as it’s human.
To the government, life matters as long as it’s useful.
Pro-choice: life matters as long as it’s outside the uterus. Pro-life: life matters unless you happen to be a ‘babykiller.’
Colin Kaepernick thinks that black lives matter and police officers believe the blue ones do.
Even certain religious organizations would have you believe that they are the only true lives that matter when it comes to entering the kingdom of heaven and eternal life.
We all seem to have some sort of conditions on what types of lives matter or which ones matter more than others.
The simple truth is that all life matters, whether animal, vegetable or mineral, to someone or something including nature. If life didn’t matter, there would be none.
In dealing with human lives, to imply that one group, gender or nationality matters more than any other promotes racism and inequality rather than the opposite.
Every time we jump on the bandwagon of one of these movements, thinking we’re standing for the right thing, every time we allow even simple prejudice into our thoughts such as believing someone who has expensive things to be more successful a person than someone who doesn’t, every time we buy into the thought that “something” can only be done by a man or to a woman, we perpetuate the problem.
There’s only one thing that differentiates the men from the women and that’s childbirth. Even nature’s separation of the sexes doesn’t negate the fact that it takes 23 equal and healthy chromosomes from each to produce another life and no matter what position in life they’re born into or what color skin they arrive wearing; they all bleed red.
Nature gave us a perfect and diverse planet filled with human beings, both man and women, that have perfectly adapted to different environments and most situations on it.
Whether black, white, brown, yellow, law-abiding or not, well dressed or not, gender defined or not, every person born on this earth is somebody else’s child and any one life matters a great deal to at least one other someone.
The chasm between which lives matter and which don’t seems to be growing with each new group.
Skin color is a matter of environment, not the way we should measure a life’s worth. No one skin color is supreme; every skin tone, hair and eye color is supreme for its humans’ environmental origin.
A successful person should not be measured by wealth, material objects or physical appearance; some people are just plain and don’t like flash or some may have obtained their wealth while lacking scruples. An overweight person should not be labeled lazy, some weight issues are pathological.
Transgender or homosexual people should not be labeled weak or confused; they seem to know exactly who they are even if others don’t and some take great strides while others suffer tremendous ridicule to be true to themselves.
Those who took a knee would have you thinking black people have been targeted because of race. Police say they are being targeted because of their profession but the opposite in both cases is actually true; statistics show that no minority group was “targeted” by anybody and three times more police died in the line of duty by means other than a bullet.
According to Statist, in 2017 there were 1,606 victims who lost their lives to police shootings, 668 of them were white, 325 were black, 347 Hispanic, 62 other and 204 unknown. In the same year, 128 officers were killed in the line of duty; 44 of which were shot and killed by a criminal. https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/
These numbers show a different story than the one we’re led to believe. Those numbers suggests to me that there’s a real problem with people just having a general disregard for life period.
We have the power to end the racism; the first step is to stop buying into the hype.
Stop believing that injustices were done against one group of people by another. We are performing an injustice against each other by believing any of them; whichever group ‘they’ happen to be.
The sad fact is that throughout history “people” have been brutal and have disregarded the lives of those who are different and even those who are, by all outward appearance, the same for thousands of years which makes the problem a humanity issue.
Wouldn’t the world be better if we all chose to live simply by the thought and deeds that “life” matters without the conditions or the need to jump on any one of the many bandwagons?
Disclaimer:
All editorials, Letters to the Editor, columns and comments are the sole opinions of the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of Mesquite Local News.
We had a recent incident in Mesquite that could have ended in a tragic manner. Due to the restraint and common sense by our police department, a life was saved. In too many communities, the police would shoot first and a person would be dead. Your stats above show what a huge problem we have with police killings. Many of these shootings were due to poor training and a lack of common sense. If kneeling during the anthem can save just one life, it is worth it.
Colin consulted veterans before he started kneeling in protest of excessive force by the police. They, and I, believe that kneeling has nothing to do with our veterans or military. Kneeling is only a way to show reverence, not hate. Only people who want to divide us, including Mr President, have made it an issue. They obviously feel that some lives are more important.