When Black Lives Matter and Matter and Matter…

I believe that black lives matter — but when it comes to Black Lives Matter, a little proportion goes a long way in society.  You have to realize how small you are to be a big deal in my book.  You have to play by the rules like the rest of us, or we have no choice but to consider you a menace.

The man who puts himself or his race above the rules isn’t a victim.  He’s an oppressor.  He robs a woman, or drives trashed, or beats up children, and then tells cops to shove it — and when the cops shove him, we find out how special he really is.  Privileged, even.  Way beyond the rest of us.  An Arab man was killed by two black girls, and they got off the hook, and nobody knows his name.  But we know Jacob Blake’s and George Floyd’s names — even though they had a history of hurting women.

The knee-jerk reaction here would be to wish equality for everyone else.  But why would I want that?  What man in his right mind would see a drunk and belligerent redneck getting pulled over and wish him a safe journey?  Who would turn the cop in if he beat him?  White people especially know that one criminal isn’t worth burning a whole city — especially not your city.  Not when it’s filled with your people’s businesses, filled with your kids’ schools, filled with your neighbors’ churches.  Do black lives matter too much?  Will there ever be a point when the black criminals feel safer than the cops?  Should there ever be a point?  And if we do reach this criminal’s utopia, what happens to the rest of us?

I blame this whole train of events on our ridiculous sense of empathy.  First off, we taught our kids, from cradle to grave, in movies and grade schools and speeches and literature, that white people hurt black people.  Second, we taught our kids that to feel for other people, people different from yourself, and underdogs, generally, is the highest use of your pity.  Pitying people like you?  That’s selfish.  Pitying “others”?  What a great person you are.

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