“Black power vs. White Power, #BlackLivesMatter vs. #AllLivesMatterPeople who post #AllLivesMatter in response to #Blacklivesmatter clearly don’t understand the what the #blacklivesmatter hash tag actually means. In order to really unpack this issue, I feel like we must go back to the idea of Black power vs. White Power. The idea of White power came out of the founding of the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction Period after the Civil War. During Reconstruction, Black people were taking political office and gaining economic power. The white population felt threatened by the success of the free Black and former slave population and turned to violence to dismantle Reconstruction and to “put Blacks in their place.” White power was founded in opposition to Black success, nay, hatred of Black people and the desire to preserve White Supremacy.Black power is not the equivalent of White Power. Black power was founded on the principal of self-determination and self love within a society that systemically and socially oppressed Black people. It was a term used to find some humanity in an inhumane system that was built on our enslavement and inferiority. Black power is about empowering Black people, not hating white people. Not denying White people opportunities or claiming Black superiority. If you contextualize Black Power within a context of White Power, you have missed the mark, completely. The same with #BlackLivesMatter. #BlackLivesMatter was a term established because Black people are being murdered by police and vigilante racists at a rate FAR ABOVE any other group in proportion to population. Black lives are at stake, institutionally and systemically. Klansmen are allowed to be the police, judge and jury and end our lives and the result is always the same: NO INDICTMENT. The message that these murders convey: BLACK LIVES DON’T MATTER. When that 16-year-old rich White kid got drunk and ran over and killed 4 people, he was acquitted because he was white and rich. When a Black woman doesn’t signal when she pulls over, she is beaten, arrested and murdered in her cell. There is no need for a hashtag to affirm White life. The American justice, education and political system does that quite well. Saying #AllLivesMatter in response to #Blacklivesmatter is escape hatch for those who:-Refuse to acknowledge that racism exists because it forces them to position themselves in it. Am I oppressor or oppressed? -Claim neutrality because they don’t want to take a stand -Don’t care about Black lives and believe that Black people are somehow inherently criminal and deserve to be murdered -Do not eat ANYTHING EVER because they value all lives, including the lives of animals and plants (these people would starve to death) -Don’t want to make White people feel uncomfortable and experience some internalized oppression that makes them value White comfort over Black life -Are in denial and can’t bear to accept that their government and/or some White people could commit such horrible deeds -Can’t accept the fact that they too could be victim to the same racist violence as Jordan Davis, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin…The truth is that there is no neutrality in this. Staying silent, as Audre Lorde said, doesn’t protect you. Silence and inactivity is compliance. Neutrality is compliance. Either my life matters to you or it doesn’t. It can’t kinda matter and Sandra Bland is not kinda dead. I challenge all of us to remove the blinders. Look at the world truly for what it is and people for who they are. It is hard to change what you refuse to even acknowledge. #BlackLivesMatter”
Written by Candice “Antique” Davis aka A Thousand Cries