by Patrice Lockert Anthony
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must someday die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
"Yet I Do Marvel" by Countee Cullen (1925)
The Black Lives Matter movement has met with a number of assaults. None of which is more curious to me, or more pernicious by nature, than the "go to" charge of "all lives matter" as a counter response. The "all lives matter" movement, within the context of its response to the "Black Lives Matter" movement is a subversive counterpoint to the inconvenience of truth telling. It is inconvenient to spend time, money, thought, energy, et cetera on the meanings and truths behind the egregious loss of black lives in a nation that refuses to hold itself accountable at individual, organizational, or societal levels.
This is what's at the heart of Countee Cullen's poem, "Yet I Do Marvel." To be pressed at the level of faith/belief in something that you've fought for, died for, celebrated, defended, and then to be left to wonder how that thing which you so honor could set you up for such unconscionable, unbearable pain of heart wrenching, soul destroying bias. It is a conundrum, to be sure, to live in a country which makes such full use of your sweat, imagination, and brilliance, only to turn around and beat you up, and down, with a foot on necks while refusing to acknowledge self-evident truths.
It is homeric logic (I'm speaking here of Homer Simpson, not Epic Literature), to sandwich "all lives matter" in between doh(s). Most sentient human beings are on board with believing that all lives matter. Indeed, saying it in response to hearing "black lives matter" is disingenuous. As if by saying, "Black Lives Matter" we are dismissing the relevance of all other lives. The true "doh" moment is not being willing or able to connect the two. Black Lives Matter because all lives matter. If all lives matter, than Black Lives Matter. If you feel the need to respond to the statement, "Black Lives Matter" by saying that all lives matter, then it is you who are suffering from the disconnect, not those who pursue justice for those killed, in large part, because of the color of their skin.
While some who answer with "all lives matter" may be suffering from a gargantuan case of naivety, most, I believe suffer from laziness, privilege, and condoned stupidity. It is easy to play at philosophy, and cleverness that is as crippled as rheumatoid joints. It takes work to get to the root of why someone would feel it needs saying that Black Lives Matter.
White people, in particular, who would deny the validity of the need to belabor the point that Black Lives Matter are trying to escape the inescapable. They are part of a culture that validates, and even rewards (george zimmerman) the unnecessary, and sometimes planned, taking of black lives. Blacks lives in so many ways, some unimaginable, are constantly, and persistently, dismissed, disrespected,and snuffed out. There must be consequences for the perpetrators whether they are officers of the law, or private citizens.
Until this nation of individuals, organizations, and laws, can say "all lives matter" and define it by the inclusion of "black lives" as lives of consequence, then we are a nation running away from itself. And since it is intellectually, physically, and spiritually impossible to run from one's self; we are doomed. Make that change in how you perceive self and other now. Accept the Buberian (see Martin Buber) challenge. Black Lives Matter.
In faith~
Straight, No ChaserTHE DECOLONIZER
November 2015
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