In response to Lindsay Robert's Aug. 30 column "#AllLivesMatter, not just #BlackLivesMatter."
Whites have had four hundred years to get their stuff together and show the world that black and brown lives matter. Their actions have failed or succeeded depending on how one looks at the issue. Either they have failed in every measure imaginable of creating an egalitarian society or they have greatly succeeded at the continuation of The New Jim Crow.
If hatred comes in all shapes and sizes where are your non-white hate groups?
Black Lives Matter targets white spaces and groups because we are the sole cause of their plight. Each and every single white person in these United States plays a direct, tangible part in the oppression and suppression of black and brown lives. The higher one's status in life, the more power one yields in the direct oppression of black lives.
Black Lives Matter has created a divide between the races? Uh, no. Four hundred years of structural, systemic, institutional racism created and sustains a divide between the races. When the sciences created and sustained different races out of sheer cloth to explain the supposed genetic difference between the differing skin colors and of course, white people placed themselves at the apex of the hierarchical order of the racial class system. This was used to justify and provide a moral escape for the terrorism that is slavery and genocide. This caste system did not just get vanquished to the bottom of the ocean. It has since been transformed, altered, tweaked, sliced and diced to fit within a newer, cleaner, more disguised and sanitized version of White Supremacy.
Whites (males) were placed at the top of the hierarchy in science and in law until at least 1968 with the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. What this means is that it was prescribed into law, white supremacy, every jurisdiction in the country until at a minimum 1968. And what, all of sudden white people, en-masse, gave up without a fight their absolute power and authority? Sorry, this is not fantasy land. Those with power never relinquish that power without a fight to the death. And that is exactly why these “disruptions” are so powerful and effective. Because blacks are asserting their power within white supremacy and the whites are in fear that there will be a leveling of the playing field and their status and authority will be somewhat relinquished. Whites are in fear of the black body, period. A black body not asking for permission to assert their power and demands in white’s only spaces, good God. The chord that strikes in the heart of all whites is fear that is palpable.
Brian Simpson
ASU Justice Studies alum
