In the wake of the Dallas and Baton Rouge tragedies, our country has been left further divided and further confused on its racial issues. Now that some white people have fallen in connection to the frustration bubbling in the black community, simply trying to ignore the issue is no longer good enough. Instead, some have seen fit to strike back at the Black Lives Matter movement— to counter it because it has finally come around to affect the white majority. These people have begun saying things that go beyond ignorant to absolutely ludicrous. Many who cried “All Lives Matter” with a passion, as if the distinction of “Black lives” made it too harsh on minds that could afford to be ignorant, now cry “White Lives Matter.” Apparently now, it is white people who are oppressed by a system that works against them and indirectly told every day that their lives don’t matter, and therefore require a movement to remind the nation that they do. It is white people who get no justice when their lives are taken, and whose names get slandered before millions rather than being allowed a simple “Rest In Peace.” It is white people who are, for lack of any other word that accurately describes it, segregated into areas that stifle their capacity for success, or, sometimes, the ability to live to reach adulthood. These notions are, of course, absolutely ridiculous to even imagine. And yet, just the other day, I found a post on Facebook imploring the world to “Stop being racist toward white people.”

I preface this by saying: I will never defend anyone who takes innocent lives, and that is not what this is. I am not playing devil’s advocate for anyone. However, do not expect my silence when certain white people come down from their pedestal of privilege to try and change the definition of racism so that someone is now being “racist” toward them, when that simply isn’t the case. While one cannot always go simply by dictionaries, there is one thing about racism that is common across all platforms on which its definition is recorded. Merriam Webster, Oxford, and Cambridge dictionaries, in addition to every web based dictionary I saw within three pages of a Google search, contain some mention of an inherent “superiority” and/or “inferiority,” that comes from qualities held by a certain race. The way I read it, then, leads to the idea that racism is not simply racial hatred, which can have many different reasons behind it that have nothing to do with a superiority complex, and which I do see manifested by small sections of the Black community toward whites, as it is manifested in only small sections of the white community toward minorities. Racism in our society is not perpetuated by these small bits of true hatred, but rather the continuation of the belief in certain qualities in races that mark them out as different from one another in ways that make certain races superior or inferior, and systems that establish, demonstrate, and maintain that superiority.

Events such as Dallas and Baton Rouge were not racist because they had nothing to do with establishing or demonstrating superiority. The killers weren’t trying to institute “black supremacy,” but striking back against a series of events that made them feel like they were being attacked. In their eyes, it was a defense against a group they feel is attacking their existence. They had enough anger to strike without concern for morality. I will return to this point.

A few days ago, I watched a documentary entitled “Crips and Bloods: Made In America.” It traced the history and origins of the warring gangs of South Central Los Angeles all the way back to the 1950s, through the Watts riots and the takedown of the Panthers movement. As interesting as the documentary was, and directly relevant to the continuing war in South Central Los Angeles, I couldn’t help but find myself more interested in the connection between the racial climate then and now, and the words of people who lived through that resonated with me and how I and many others feel now.

There was a section in the documentary that elaborated on the Los Angeles Police Department and how its officers made a habit of stopping blacks for what seemed to be no reason, asking them why they were where they were, where they came from, when they were going home—as if they didn’t have a right to be anywhere, or to simply exist. Kumasi, a man raised in South Central Los Angeles in the 1950s, detailed life in those times, living through and participating in the Watts riots. He spoke of being fed “a spoonful of hatred” daily from the way he was treated by police and the system, and what that has the power to do psychologically.

Kumasi put himself back in the eyes through which he saw things as a young black man in South Central Los Angeles in the 1950s, and says, “Every day, that’s my diet: a spoonful of hatred. You see? And it’s just a question of when this is going to erupt, and upon whom is it going to erupt?” Now think about today. In the past couple of years, we have seen innocent Black men, women, and children killed with no justice after the fact and very little measures to augment the systems that allowed these things to happen, at a frequency that causes black to fear for their lives and the lives of their families and friends. We ask why Blacks make up 12 percent of the American population, and more than twice that amount (26 percent) of police shootings, while whites make up sixty six percent of the American population and forty nine percent of police shootings, as people try to tell us that there is no problem because, based purely on numbers, two times as many whites have been killed by police. If there is no race problem in police shootings, shouldn’t the racial distributions come at least fairly close to the national distributions? Names and numbers rise, and certain parts of the government and society deny a problem in favor of “supporting our police.” Once again, blacks seem to be swallowing a daily spoonful of hatred. Perhaps more accurately, our daily spoonful never stopped.

Continue following the line of reasoning given by Kumasi, and the conclusion is that, eventually, something is going to erupt. Kumasi, still reflecting, says “I’m a walking time bomb. I’m going to go off, someday, somewhere, on somebody. The question is, whom?” One group went off in Dallas. Another went off in Baton Rouge. But these attacks were not racist (a) because they targeted police, not white people specifically (one of the officers to die in Baton Rouge was, in fact, black) and (b) because they were reactionary—in response to what they felt an entire group was doing to attack them as black citizens. It was wrong, there is no excuse, and this is not a defense of their actions. But the words of Kumasi provide an explanation and destroy any notion of racism toward white people in these instances. Do I believe that racism from blacks to whites can exist? If I didn’t, I would be racist because of the thought that racism is an inherently white quality. However, in our society and its continuing control by the white majority, it can’t and doesn’t exist in a capacity that affects anything in white lives.

Therefore, let it go on record that you, as a white person, have not experienced true “racism.” Any hatred you have faced because of your race has been a reaction to racism that has been perpetuated by your society—an anger created and fed by a spoonful of hatred, every day, for centuries. And, in my eyes, you trying to pull a race card is not only stupid, but a mockery of the experiences of all the people that your ancestors directly oppressed and that your society continues to oppress with your permission—not just blacks, but Natives, Latinos, and Asians as well.

I conclude with this quote, again from Kumasi: “When you send me the message that my life is of no value, then how can your property, how can your society, how can your civilization, how can any of the mores or the rules or any other monuments, how can any of that be of any value to me?” Dallas, Baton Rouge, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and Charles Kinsey are all tragedies that share a solution. And it is change that brings black lives to the same standard of importance as “all lives.” Because as long as we perceive that our lives don’t matter to our society, why should that society and its lives and rules matter to us?