What I Mean When I Say Black Lives Matter

I can still feel the week the officers who killed Breonna Taylor were not held responsible. It’s etched into me—not just because of the news itself, but because that same week one of my biracial kids quietly said they wished they had white skin like mine.

Picture entitled Protest Signs from Wix

I remember standing there, caught between heartbreak and fury, wishing this country could see and cherish their lives with the same ease it sees and cherishes mine. Wishing whiteness hadn’t shaped the world in a way that makes a child long for a different body. Wishing I could undo the whole system that created that longing in the first place.

There was a deep ache in all of it. That familiar punch in the gut when another call for justice is met with a shrug from the very institutions that promise protection. I wanted to shout Black Lives Matter loud enough to finally crack something open. To make something shift.

But it felt like no matter how clearly the harm was exposed, no matter how many people filled the streets, no matter how many families grieved publicly and loudly, nothing moved.

And here we are—after more violence, more names added to the list, more families mourning—still watching the same patterns unfold. Still insisting on a truth whiteness keeps trying to bury—Black Lives Matter. They matter in our communities, in our families, in our workplaces, in our politics, in our stories. They mattered then. They matter now.

We in the U.S. love to repeat lines like every life matters or justice for all. But the way our systems behave tells a different story. These systems—imagined, built, and maintained mostly by white men—were never designed to treat all lives as equal. We say all are created equal here, but the lived experience keeps showing how unequally lives are held.

When Breonna was killed—unarmed, in her home—and no one was held accountable, it revealed (again) that wide, painful gap between who we say we are and who we actually are. A gap whiteness created and continues to defend. That gap is why we still need to say Black Lives Matter, out loud and without apology.

For me, saying Black Lives Matter has never been political. It’s personal. I’m talking about people I love—my kids, my partner, my friends, my neighbors. Real human beings whose safety and dignity matter deeply to me.

And if you’re white like I am, you might feel a familiar discomfort rise up when race comes into the conversation. I get it. So many white folks do. But that discomfort doesn’t change the fact that race shapes every one of us—especially those of us who benefit from whiteness.

Being white in this country may shield us from certain harms, but it doesn’t spare us from the cost. It shows up differently for us. As fragmentation. As disconnection. As the loss of our own clarity and humanity when we participate in a system that harms others. And yes—our bodies are impacted by this too—just in ways we might not easily see (read this article for more on this).

I’m tangled up in this system. There are ways that it has protected me, privileged me, and rewarded me. And because of that, I have to keep paying attention to the ways whiteness has formed me. The ways I might reinforce what I say I want to dismantle.

That week, the system told us—again—how little it valued Breonna’s life, just as it has shown us with countless black and brown lives before hers. And as our family grieved, for her, her loved ones, for the country we live in and the country we could be—we also grieved the lack of safety my brown kids and black partner face every day.

We still grieve. We still lament the way black and brown children learn so early who is valued and who isn’t. They see what whiteness gives white folks. My kids see what it gives me. And every day, we work to counter the messages this system hands them—to affirm their beauty, their brilliance, their worth—while the world tries to deny it.

So, how do we raise black and brown kids to know their unshakeable worth when the world keeps treating people like them as disposable? How do we hold outrage and hope at the same time? And how do white people like me face our connection to the very system that advantages us and continues to harm those we care about?

None of this is too much to ask. It’s not too much to expect that a country claiming freedom and justice stop killing unarmed black and brown people. It’s not too much to demand that the systems meant to protect all of us stop making violence feel inevitable.

And if none of this stirs curiosity in you—if you can’t feel outrage or concern—then please, stop repeating phrases like everyone matters or we’re all equal. Even if that’s your belief, it’s not what our systems practice, and it’s not what many people live. Declaring a personal belief as if it’s a shared truth only helps keep things exactly as they are.

We can grow. We can change. And we can help create a reality where those big promises we love to repeat actually become real for all of us.