Do All Black Lives Matter? © 2016





The black community unleashed massive protests and outrage over highly publicized police murders of about 12 black males. We’re talking about Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, the brothers killed in Baton Rouge, Minnesota, Chicago, South Carolina, and elsewhere. Each one of those murdered young men was turned into a martyr after they were killed by white law enforcement officers.




Protests were understandable and certainly justified in each case. But there’s a disconnect and major inconsistency on our part.




As a group, we were eager to protest the killings of those black males. But why is it we don’t protest the killings of 1000s of other black males killed every year by other Blacks? Don’t they matter? Is it because those Blacks were not “fortunate” enough to be murdered by a white cop?




It would seem that Black Lives Matter, but only when a racist and racism are involved and only when we can play the racism card. Then, we elevate the dead black person to martyr status. But if your brother, sister, mother, father, cousin, grandchild, wife, husband, child was murdered by another black person, on one will know their names, they won’t become martyrs, and they will remain anonymous. There won’t be any protests, outrage, chants of “No Justice, No Peace,” none of that.





We are in such denial about this issue. Some of us will even take great offense if the difference in how we respond to Blacks killed by Whites vs the way we respond to Blacks killed by other Blacks is even brought up.




But the question remains. Do all black lives matter? Do they only matter when we can play the race card? The answer isn’t in what we say. The answer is in what we do. We’re destroying each other, and too many of us are numb and indifferent.