A white deputy violently attacks a 16-year-old black girl who was being non-violently insubordinate in a South Carolina high school. (Which I wrote an article about yesterday).
A teenage black boy in a New Jersey high school violently attacks his 62-year-old white teacher for taking away his cell phone, the video goes viral this week (over 35 million views on Facebook…NOTE: this incident happened in January 2015! The video was first posted on YouTube on January 24th!).
People are now using the actions of the black teenage boy in New Jersey to defend the actions of the white deputy in South Carolina.
“That white deputy in SC was justified in attacking that non-violent black girl because a black boy in NJ attacked his white teacher!”
Because that’s how black teens are, and they deserved to be beat for it.
Why are we so desperate to defend whiteness?
Why are we so insecure?
Why are we so afraid to humbly look at how our past has shaped our present and respond with love and understanding toward blacks instead of arrogance and defense?
The #BlackLivesMatter movement emerges from a nation that was shaped and formed by blacks being beaten and killed by white police officers without any legal ramifications.
In respond to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, whiteness is defended by lists of white police officers who were killed by black men.
Whiteness is defended by lists of “black on black” crime.
Whiteness is defended by pointing out that some of the black people killed or beaten by the white police were in fact committing crimes.
Whiteness is defended by pointing out what each black person could have done to avoid being beaten or killed.
Whiteness is defended by #AllLivesMatter, #BlueLivesMatter, #PoliceLivesMatter and #WhiteLivesMatter campaigns.
If my gorgeous 3-year-old blond-haired blue-eyed daughter steals candy from a convenience store and I pummel her with a billy club for it, and I don’t get prosecuted because I’m just doing my duty as a father, am I justified because she committed a crime?
Are my actions justified because she and another 3-year-old at preschool had some “toddler on toddler” crime yesterday on the playground when they got in a fight?
Are my actions justified because I can show you a list of the scores of children who have murdered their stand-up fathers by poisoning them?
Would you start a #WhiteFathersMatter campaign on my behalf, as a way to make sure all of white dads who don’t beat their 3-year-old blond-haired kids up with billy clubs don’t get their feelings hurt or get associated with me when people discuss the injustice of my story.
Are my actions justified because my daughter shouldn’t have been stealing in the first place, shouldn’t have gone into the convenience store, shouldn’t have gone down that aisle, shouldn’t have talked back to me when I confronted her, shouldn’t have disrespected my authority, shouldn’t have ran to her room when I pulled out the billy club, or simply shouldn’t eat so much candy in the first place? It is really bad for your teeth, after all.
If a group that was sympathetic toward 3-year-old blond-haired blue-eyed girls started marching and protesting and picketing that I should indeed be prosecuted for my violence, would you assume that they were against all white fathers? Would you assume their was a war between white fathers and those who are sympathetic toward toddlers? If some who are sympathetic toward 3-year-old blond-haired blue-eyed girls got so emotional and passionate about the injustice of my case because they too were beaten with billy clubs by their fathers and their fathers never got prosecuted, and those deep wounds were all poignantly flared up instantaneously, that they (whether intentionally or unintentionally) were indeed communicating that all white fathers were like me, would I then be justified in pummeling my 3-year-old with a billy club? And would I then deserve a campaign to defend me? And the next white father who beats up his 3-year-old blond-haired blue-eyed daughter with a billy club for stealing candy or for jaywalking or for not holding his hand in the parking lot would get the same campaign and support and defense?
If the pummeling of my daughter by my billy club happened in Michigan, would a video go viral the next day of a kid in Arizona who 9 months ago kicked his dad in the crotch and then hit him in the head with a baseball bat? A kid who was legally punished for what he did to his dad. With thousands of comments about how kids are violent and deserve to be beat up with billy clubs.
Of course not.
Because blond-haired, blue-eyed, white-skinned girls matter.
This just in: so do black ones.
#BlackLivesMatter
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Without a God of Law and Grace, we are left struggling for “rightness”. Defending our own rightness… or the “rightness” of those “like us”… and condemning the “wrongness” of those who we feel threaten our “rightness” leaves us divided and self-righteous.
Hey Brent, thanks for chiming in! The issue of injustice sure is a tricky one. God is so adamant in the Bible, both NT and OT that his people are to be standing for the oppressed, standing for justice, etc. and he gets very upset when this doesn’t happen. I’m actually amazed how much this is in the Bible, how strongly it is worded, yet how much it’s ignored in standard Church teaching. But then practically, it sure does make it hard to apply in 2015. I see the Black Lives Matter movement as a pretty solid movement to get behind as a biblical issue, supporting those who have been oppressed, and in grace and humility acknowledging the sins that led to the racial inequity in our society. But there are certainly Christians who disagree with me on this! That this isn’t actually an injustice issue. I don’t want to alienate these brothers and sisters from me who feel this way, but at the same time I have to be faithful to what God has revealed to me in his word and how he has shown me that plays out in 2015. It’s not easy.
Both videos fuel ignorance and stereotypes in my opinion. The video with the cop will create further misconceptions about police officers while the video with the white teacher will create further misconceptions about young black men. This becomes dangerous when a lot of people today fail to actually do any research on issues but instead rely on viral videos to form their opinions on serious matters.
Blacklivesmatter is tough for me. Its easy for me to look at the movement critically and ask why so much attention is being paid to BLM while little is being done to stop more of the alleged “serious problems” in the black community. An example would be when a black friend of mine from Benton Harbor posted on facebook trying to get people to meet about preventing youth violence and high dropout rates. He received 5 messages. The same guy posted about getting together a BLM group and had hundreds of messages within 10 minutes. This is how a lot of middle class black and white people I know feel about this but I’m not sure that’s fair. How would I feel if I was a black guy raised in a poor neighborhood? How would I feel if I had experienced profiling myself? I will never know what its like to fear for my life when a police officer is around. I will never know what its like to be profiled. I can pretend I do, but I never will.
Anyway, good discussion as always. I have a lot of respect for the work you do even if you are terrible at golf and have very nice hair.
It isn’t whiteness, it’s balance that’s defended from those who accuse all white police officers of wanting to murder black men.
I forgot to mention, that was you.
http://www.atacrossroads.net/dear-white-police-officers-please-stop-murdering-black-men/
Hi Anonymous, I’m not sure if you actually read that article? Quoted:
So if you’re defending balance, I guess we are on the same side.
Good thing too because there has been no balance for blacks in America for their entire existence here so the more on the side of balance, the better!
I did read the article before you added that in. You edited that but not your title. I left the news stories in the comments for balance there.
Blacks have gotten a raw deal in this country and from law enforcement and still do in most ways that matter. I have no trouble saying that. When you stop calling out all white cops as murderers on blog titles, maybe we’ll be on the same side. Hey man, they’re your words.