Editor’s note: This commentary is by Tom McKone, of Montpelier, who is a retired English teacher, principal and library administrator.
I had to wait in line to get my first picture of the BLACK LIVES MATTER mural painted on the street in front of the Statehouse in Montpelier. I was on foot, but some people came in cars, parked and got out to take pictures. It was Day 1, and the huge BLM mural was already a hit. More importantly, it was a positive sign that maybe this time things really will change.
How much can be packed into three words? Quite a bit — especially when they are more than 20 feet tall and over 300 feet long. In the past few weeks, Black Lives Matter has been the rallying cry at protests in all 50 states and in cities around the world. Political and business leaders at every level have made statements and promises, and some actions are already in the works. Some Confederate statues have come down, and Confederate flags have been banned in more places. Both NASCAR and the NFL — conservative organizations long hesitant to take stands against racist symbols — have taken new, more progressive positions.
The list of positive indicators is long and encouraging, and the reaction against racism is so much more forceful than ever before that it brings us hope. A half-century ago, the civil rights movement brought some progress, but it never had such a broad support. The test, of course, is how well we follow through on all the reassuring words.
But let’s step back to the pictures I was taking of those three, now-famous words: Black Lives Matter. While I was on the edge of State Street, waiting for momentarily heavy and slow traffic to pass, I overheard a comment from a man in the passenger seat of a car stopped at my elbow. The windows were down and the man said, not meanly but with some exasperation, “I still don’t see why it’s not All Lives Matter.” It was the third such comment I had heard in a week. Those comments and the vandalism to the mural on the first night are reminders that we still have work to do.
The phrase Black Lives Matter was coined by Alicia Garza, a California civil rights organizer, in 2013, following the acquittal of the white man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old, black, high school student. Martin was armed with nothing more than a bag of Skittles and a can of fruit juice, but the self-appointed vigilante thought he looked dangerous. To some, black or brown skin and a hoody define dangerous.
BLM emphasizes the perennial problem with race relations in the United States: Many white people don’t get it (like the man in the car) and some don’t want to (like whoever vandalized the Montpelier mural). This is largely because most of us were taught a sanitized version of American history. Since the first enslaved people were brought here 400 years ago, white-dominated government and society have kept themselves on top and have denied people of color equality, a fair chance to get ahead, and many basic freedoms that whites take for granted. Yes, emancipation and the civil rights movement marked progress. But emancipation was followed by the terrorism of the Jim Crow era (including thousands of lynchings without repercussions) and by New Deal and post-WWII GI work, education and housing programs designed to help mostly white people.
The civil rights movement was followed by the war on drugs, which was — and still is — mostly a war on black people. Despite some media portrayals, the majority of black incarcerations are for nonviolent crimes. Roughly the same percentage of blacks and whites use illegal drugs; however, black juveniles, for example, are six times as likely to be prosecuted for the same crimes as white juveniles. That will cut close to the bone for some: White teenagers caught with drugs usually get a slap on the wrist, while black teenagers usually end up with a criminal record. If it were the other way around, how long would middle class white America allow youthful indiscretions to threaten their children’s futures? (Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” powerfully details the mass incarceration of black Americans.)
As a whole, white people are oblivious to how hard it can be to be anything but white in America, and for four centuries we have behaved as though Black Lives Don’t Matter. That is exactly why we need to say and keep saying, Black Lives (Do) Matter. Do All Lives Matter? Of course. But saying All Lives Matter once again encourages us to forget our ugly, racist history. Right now, the most we could honestly claim would be that Some Lives Matter.
A news photo from a protest in Essex Junction showed three young women holding a large cardboard sign that summarized where we are: “All Lives Don’t Matter Until Black Lives Matter.” If, as a country, we reach a point where we truly believe and behave as though Black Lives Matter, we can put that statement in the history books. We could then paint All Lives Matter on our streets and it would be true. But we have a very long way to go, and in the meantime, our mantra needs remain aspirational: Black Lives Matter.
