#BlackLivesMatter
We Have to Do Better
I love to binge series on Netflix and Amazon Video. Recently, finding myself between series, I was looking at available offerings on Amazon Video and stumbled across the Expendables franchise. I thought, “Hey, I like action, and this is just good old fashion gratuitous action, yeah? I’m in!” I seem to recall watching the movies years ago, but after the first movie and a few minutes into the second this time, I’m out.
Here’s the problem… these movies are all about a group of white guys roaming the world indiscriminately destroying black and brown bodies with impunity and a smile. Oh yes, they have a token black Expendable, Terry Crews (whom I adore in other roles). But his character is just shallow sexual comic relief. There’s even a token Asian Expendable, Jet Li, whose character is a punching bag for a white teammate and is always grubbing for more money owed him because of his diminutive stature relative to the white Expendables. I also noticed by the third movie they add a token female to the team. Wow.
The added value of being white in the movies? You can get shot, and not die from it. You can attack your own team, brutalize the token Asian Expendable, and be redeemed by the second movie. In fact, as an added bonus, the Asian Expendable will now be your buddy sidekick.
The added value of being brown or black in the franchise? You’ll be an incompetent. As in you’ll be an incompetent pirate, despot, soldier or hapless bystander who is shot, run over, cut, burned, crushed, exploded or otherwise dismembered by a grinning white Expendable, unless Terry Crew’s character hasn’t delivered an on-camera sexual innuendo about his gun lately, and then he’ll kill you.
So, what’s the big deal? Why this big post? It’s because we who are white have got to wake up to this not so subtle but constant degradation and devaluing of black and brown bodies. How else do we think so many armed police officers who claim not to be racist end up killing all those unarmed black and brown bodies? In part because gratuitous violence by white do-gooders upon black and brown bodies is a movie mainstay, an unquestioned entertainment, and a national on-screen pastime belonging to white America. Most of the time we don’t even notice it when it’s so prominently displayed in front of us without any effort to hide or nuance it.
Notice I’ve not said that Sylvester Stallone, the power house actor and force behind the franchise, is racist. I’m not saying that any of the actors in the franchise is particularly racist. I’m saying that the systems which produce such garbage, the movie industry, the white penchant for needing black and brown antagonists, our viewing habits as consumers, our desensitization toward violence done to brown and black bodies, and our understanding of the world and its people and politics, are steeped in generations of racism and racists assumptions. Every time we white consumers notice the blatant ugliness of the way we devalue and destroy brown and black lives on-screen for our entertainment, we have to stop and seek something better. We can no longer quietly accept the racially destructive and hurtful expressions on-screen and consume them without question. It just may be that our souls are at stake. I know without a doubt that our black and brown neighbors’ lives are at stake.
AMDG, Todd
The Hashtag Matters
Black lives matter. I find it hard to understand why we have to elaborate so much on what this statement actually means. It means that our black neighbors matter. Our black friends matter. Our black family members matter. Following the suggestion of a congregant and leader here at CiB I made a #BlackLivesMatter banner for the lawn out front, to express our solidarity with all our black neighbors and to express our solidarity with a local church that had its own #BlackLivesMatter banner defaced multiple times.
When I got an email asking what I thought of this idea, making a banner for our church lawn, I thought immediately of another local church banner that was defaced. Back in the last couple of years a sister church up on Old Georgetown Rd, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, had a banner asking for us to stand against gun violence defaced by the removal of gun. Really people, words matter.
The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was born of a very real and present fear among our black neighbors that their lives don’t matter or don’t matter as much as other lives. That fear is born of many actual and verifiable things like:
- the history of racism and racial violence (as recent as a shooting this year in a black church in South Carolina, so don’t be fooled by the word history… that legacy of racism is still active and impactful in our society, today),
- prison incarceration rates for black citizens in the U.S.
- policing procedures in some cities that target black youth,
- harsher penalties for black offenders than people of other races for the same offenses,
- disproportionate arrest rates and episodes of police brutality and lethal force against unarmed black citizens.
- disproportionate death rates when interacting with police, even when unarmed.
And if that weren’t enough, too many of their white neighbors just shrug and blame the victim for these inequalities and offer crass advice about too often playing the race card. And of course, we can always find an exception to a rule. There are black Americans who have not faced as much racism or negative attention from neighbors and law enforcement. But even as we are glad that some may not face such trouble, we are not granted a license to ignore the experience of so many who do. Finding a black neighbor without this fear does not erase the fear in the lives of others, just as one police officer behaving badly does not mean all police officers are bad. The hashtag is not just spin. The hashtag is asking if we care about our neighbor’s fear and pain. The hashtag invites us to come together around a truth that cannot be denied: black lives do matter. The hashtag doesn’t divide; it asks us to come together to put meaningful action behind our beliefs of equality and justice.
It seems we do have to say it: #BlackLivesMatter does not mean that white lives don’t, or brown lives don’t, or blue lives don’t (murder of police officers is tragically spiking this year), or that any other lives don’t matter. It simply means that black lives do matter, for real. It doesn’t mean they matter more, but does for sure address the fear that some believe that they matter less. The hashtag was born for a reason, with cause. It didn’t come from nowhere. It came from fear, doubt and experience.
It would be amazing if we didn’t need the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag! It would be an answer to prayers! It would be a great if our neighbors no longer lived in the fear and doubt that they would be aggressively policed and killed without cause. It would be wonderful if they that justice was also for them and theirs. It would be fabulous if their fears and concerns were heard and acted upon. The hashtag dreams of that world! Let it do its work. Let it remind us that listening to one another and taking one another seriously is important. Let it remind us that there are people behind hashtags, people that matter.
People of faith of any color should not be afraid of #BlackLivesMatter, but should embrace it’s truth: black lives do indeed matter. To become part of the solution we have to listen to the voices expressing the fear and doubt, and the pain and anger. Denying the voices of our neighbors who are hurting simply denies us and them the opportunity to begin the healing.
Escalate peace. The hashtag is not a call to violence or to more fighting. The hashtag is a call to step back and view one another with dignity and respect, black and white and blue and every shade around. We have to stop escalating the violence and fear and begin to build bridges and relationships between communities that will foster cooperation and growth. We can do this. We must do this. And the people of the book who claim the One who said “my peace I leave you” must work to establish this vision in the soil of very continent, nation and community of our beautiful shared planet.
AMDG, Todd
toddthomas.net 