Eight minutes and 46 Seconds on a Picturesque Day
Today’s Politico’s quote-of-the-day was spot-on, in my opinion. It was from California Assemblywoman Sydney Kamlager, spoken just before lawmakers knelt on the Capitol steps for eight minutes and 46 seconds to mark George Floyd’s death.
“This day is picturesque. It would be a day to go jogging if you were Ahmaud Arbery. To ride a bike if you were Freddie Gray. To read a book if you were Keith Scott. To cash a check if you were Yvonne Smallwood. To rest if you were Breonna Taylor. To shop for auto parts if you were Walter Scott. To be 10 years old if you were Clifford Glover. To breathe if you were Eric Garner.”
Assemblywoman Sydney Kamlager
Kamlager summed it up beautifully, in my opinion. Police violence is out of control and skews significantly toward heavier punishment and higher probability of death-by-cop if your skin is not Northern European white. And every single one of the people she mentioned were doing absolutely NOTHING to warrant being murdered by the police. It could easily have been me.
Except it would not happen to me, because my skin is the color that racist cops protect. I’ve had occasion to have been harassed by police (I promise to tell at least one or two of those stories some day, if not today), but in every instance I was always treated with some bit of respect even before interaction because of the color of my skin.
It is Fundamentally wrong and—yes, I’ll say it—“un-American” for me to be treated as “innocent until proven guilty,” when another person exactly like me in every way except skin tone is treated as “guilty until proven innocent.”
I agree with the right-wingers that All Lives Matter. The thing is, while all lives do matter, not all lives are valued, at least not in their world. That’s my fundamental issue with racism, that’s why I don’t understand why people are racist. I mean, I understand why people want to think they are special in some way and better than others somehow, but that’s a false premise that drives me nuts.
Every Life Matters
When it comes down to “life,” simple, fundamental life, Every Life Matters. As a being on this planet, I am not better than you, you are not better than me. We are different, certainly. And yes, I am insanely protective of my time and who I choose to spend my time with. If you look down on others for any reason, you will not find yourself in my company again. And yes, there are people in this world that I go out of my way to avoid because they make my life worse instead of better. Some do so intentionally, others through unintended actions that demonstrate the true person beneath whatever polite or proper words they use. Even people I do not like, even people I do not respect, even people who do hateful things . . . they all matter. We are not all the same, but we all matter.
And no one, absolutely no one, should have to fear anyone else because of physical discrepancies such as skin tone, weight, gender . . . you get my meaning.