A few days ago, my husband and I were in Walmart. Two men (about their late teens early twenties) were riding around on the handicap motorized shopping carts as their girlfriends walked around with them. They then proceeded to both ram the end caps at full speed and began to laugh about it. My husband, disturbed by what he was seeing said to them, "Why don't you put those carts back for people who actually need them?". The one girl (I refuse to use the word woman or lady because she was less than such) then shouted, "Why don't you mind your own fucking business?". In response my husband said something along the lines of, 'if you can ram into things and giggle, you obviously don't need the carts'. The girl then shouted "Black Lives Matter". We found a manager and addressed the problem with him and he ended up kicking them out of the store.
In this brief incident, there was a severe case of racial profiling and discriminatory contempt. My husband, in his dress khakis and tucked in polo shirt, was assumed to be an entitled racist white man correcting a young adult - not for destruction of property, or using a handicap device when they didn't need it strutting out in the parking lot - but because they were black. Oh the oppression!
These four, have missed the point.
Now, to those that think this [BLM] is strictly a bunch of hula-baloo stirred up by black supremacists and perpetuated by a biased media, those who think this is a directive to kill police, those who think there is absolutely no reason to protest because racism just doesn't happen in today's America.
You too, have missed the real point.
Black Lives Matter has the potential to be a great and powerful movement in communities who are oppressed, profiled, violated, and discriminated against. I am not naive enough to believe that racism does not exist in our country - because it most certainly does. And that is wrong. Black Lives do matter. No one should ever fear being stopped by police or other law enforcement because they are a certain race or gender. No one should fear the justice system if they are innocent. In these terrible cases of injustice and in some cases murder of innocent men and women - Black Lives Matter, too - just as much as any white, Hispanic, Asian, etc life. THIS is where the need for this movement lies.
But in this Walmart case of discrimination, you can CLEARLY see that these people are opportunists manipulating the message from "we deserve equality" to "we deserve whatever we want whenever we want and if you don't let us its because you're racist". These people have transformed the movement into "Black Lives Matter More". I'm so terribly sorry that this young girl felt that her life was in mortal danger from the racist oppression of her boyfriend because he was not allowed to goof off on a motorized cart with his friend in a Pennsylvania Walmart.
This is Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Not Detroit or Baltimore. People are not getting gunned down in the streets or dying in police custody. If people are getting gunned down, its by their wives in the comfort of their own home (Vicites shooting) and by persons of the same race (white and black alike).
By this time (the time of publication), this example at a local Walmart is at least a couple months old; however, it is enlightening none the less. ALL the negative things people have to say about BLM - which are always said to be lies and misperception by the privileged white class - are embodied in this instance. Many people have told me that the stupid, system skating, tax evading, drug using crap that occurs in our county "happens everywhere, not just here". Assuming this statement is true - then the opportunistic, ignorant, trashy-behaved people like the ones we see in my personal example must also happen everywhere and not just here. And THERE is the problem. Like my piece on the BET Humanitarian Award, there is a problem in America - and continuing to promote hate and supremacy of any kind will not fix it.
Becasue this point has been missed on SO many levels, it needs to be addressed. Becasue so many have misunderstood BLM's meaning, it is in need of adjustment. This adjustment is necessary because it is not just us "privileged white folk scared of the black man" who are reading and hearing it as "Black Lives Matter MORE", it is those in unoppressed lives fighting to do whatever in the hell they want because they're black. This hijacking of what could be an amazing movement should enrage those fighting hardest for its truth to be heard. This misunderstanding should be met with the response of changing the movement title to Black Lives Matter, Too. If you meant for the "too" to be a silently perceived thing, your message has failed and needs adjusting.
