Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Editor-in-Chief, wrote a powerful piece about white privilege a few months ago that I, fortunately, came across this week. What I Said When My White Friend Asked for My Black Opinion on White Privilege is her response to a direct question an old high school friend asked her on Facebook. The article reinforces how worrying it is to sustain the belief that Black people already have equality.
As I was reading her stories, I felt lucky because I will only be able to imagine how it must feel to be Black in the United States. I will never have to live it. The mistreatment the race have received throughout the history of this country is shameful, but what is even more deplorable is the denial that it still exists.
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The Black Lives Matter movement was created because ALL lives never really mattered in the first place. All this time, only white lives did. Black people in the United States have been always oppressed. Whether it is on the "little things" such as "having your intellectual capabilities questioned based solely on your skin color," like Hutcherson stated in her article; or on the "big things" like getting shot because an officer felt threaten just because you were black. Since slavery in America, there was an undeniable improvement in the way we see each other as human beings, but that doesn't mean the problem is completely gone. Black people are still being negatively judged because of the color of their skin, and because of the color of their skin only. Ask any outsider, such as myself, and they will tell you that American culture is prejudiced. They will tell you that your country is still racist.
If you can't see that Black people are not treated as if they have the same rights as white people, you are either blinded by your ignorance or you are just choosing to spread hate. And that, my friend, is even worse. It appears to me that great part of the white population in the United States are so quick to conveniently jump into a black's person shoes and tell them what is going on that they forget they don't know how it feels to have hatred and disgust centered directly into you because of how many melanin does your body makes. It's like they think the only way to feel powerful is by
The BLM movement was not created with the purpose of diminishing the importance of the lives of people from other races in the U.S., and if you got that idea, I'm sorry, but you are either trying to turn yourself into the victim or ignorance - again - is affecting the way your brain works.
Just like Jews were looked down based on their religion almost 80 years ago, Black people are despised because of the color of their skin since we know Earth by Earth. White people need to stop venturing a guess about an oppression they don't suffer.
They have the right to be mad, so let them be bad. They have the right to fight against injustice, so let them fight. As another minority in this country, I will defend their rights as if I was defending my own because I refuse to forget that, in 1942, in the peak of the Holocaust, the people of Auschwitz remained silent. Today, 74 years later, I fear America will do the same.
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."Desmond Tutu.
