How can we say all lives matter, America? The word “all” is defined as: being and representing the entire or total number, full amount, or whole quantity. America, has our picture of equality and culture acceptance really been including all of the beautiful God-created cultures that represent our nation? No. America has literally painted a popular picture that includes heavy oppression, and discrediting the screaming cries of justice that seems to fill the air in America from our African American community. This is not who we are, America!
Do you know what we’ve become America? Read below.
Being a teenager whose world is pretty much wrapped around social media, every morning I instantly reach for my phone to awaken my socially-wrapped life. As I was scrolling down on my news feed on Facebook today, I noticed that two topics were trending: #AltonSterling and #TomiLahrenFinalThoughts. Sadly, the #AltonSterling topic is not a surprise to me. Being an African American, my eyes are unfortunately used to seeing the discussion behind this topic. Everywhere my eyes focus on, it seems that I am constantly reminded that my race is under attack by either America’s suffocating inhumane treatment towards my race’s rights or the treacherous ways of the judicial system with its set target of elimination on our heads. As for the #TomiLahrenFinalThoughts topic, my eyes were quite fresh to both the topic and the discussion behind it. After diving into this topic’s interesting discussion, I rode on a non-stop emotion roller coaster of hurt, anger, and disappointment.
The popularity of the #TomiLahrenFinalThoughts topic is fueled by a video of Tomi Lahren discussing her opinion on the whole #AltonSterling topic. I saw a wide variety of responses to this video, ranging from white supremacy views all the way to the other side of the spectrum that included straight on black power. Here’s my final thought to you Tomi Lahren: All lives can't matter until black lives matter!
Tomi Lahren, you said some very interesting points in your final thought video on Alton Sterling. The most interesting point you made was, “This isn’t for a sketchy cellphone video to decide, it’s for the justice department to decide.” Tomi Lahren, let me take you back to the era of when the Black Lives Matter movement was started. According to the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement (Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza), this movement was “a call to action for Black people after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was post-humously placed on trial for his own murder and the killer, George Zimmerman, was not held accountable for the crime he committed.” When Trayvon Martin was killed, we had no hard evidence to pin on George Zimmerman, and we thought that the justice department would give justice. But no, that did not happen at all. Now since people are filming these police officers, showing their strong intent of murdering the victims that have fallen, you still want to say that this is not enough. When will it be enough? Every time my community seems to give good, clean, hard evidence, it seems that it will always be “krap.”
I conclude with this to you Tomi Lahren: Our worst mistakes do not define who we are. Just because Alton Sterling may have had a criminal past, does not mean he deserved to die. Nobody does. In the moment of his arrest, we do not see this concealed weapon you keep claiming that he has. We do not see Alton reaching for anything. All we see is a man being arrested, and minutes later being shot dead. You keep saying that we can’t conclude any opinion on this, because we have no evidence. If you truly believe this, you would not have gone on to social media to even talk about this man’s past. You talking about this man’s past was clearly an opinionated view of Alton Sterling, and also your video is very impressionable to our society. If you keep saying that we need to leave it to the justice system, then take down your video. Take it down, and leave it to the judicial system to explain who Alton Sterling was. You are not the system.
And one more thing, Tomi Lahren. In one of your earlier final thought videos, you talked about the Black Lives Matter movement. You discredited the whole movement by saying, “All lives matter.” How can you even say this when you didn’t even show any true remorse for the death of Alton Sterling. How can America even be saying this? America, it’s like you used this statement to discredit anything bad that has happened to people of “other” minority groups or beliefs. I’m not saying America as a whole, because as you can see in my cover photo for this article, there is some racial support behind the Black Lives Matter movement, but it’s sad to say that it’s the minority, and not the majority of the American public. America, support us and fight with us for justice and social equality. The Black Lives Matter movement is not a movement that lashes out on other races. According to the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, (Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza), “Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.” Nowhere in that statement does it say anything derogatory towards other races or place the blame onto the whole judicial system. Please Tomi Lahren, please America, stop discrediting the Black Lives Matter movement. We just want our voices to be heard, recognized, and justified.
