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What I Mean When I Say Black Lives Matter

Updated: Oct 25, 2022

This week the cops who killed Breonna Taylor were not held responsible and another call for justice went unanswered. I want to scream, “Black Lives Matter!” and it miraculously result in change.


A white woman stands holding a sign that reads “Black Lives Matter.” A white man stands slightly behind her holding a sign that reads “End Racism”
Picture entitled Protest Signs from Wix

Only, it seems no matter how loud the volume, how compelling the case, how the

injustices protested, or how egregious the harm against an innocent, unarmed black body; no change will come. We can say that every life matters, that there is justice for all, but these are empty words as, time and time again, our system makes plain how some lives simply do not matter.


Our system, conceived of and built by white men and for the most part, maintained and revised by white, Christian, hetero men; was not designed to preserve and value all lives. To trumpet “all are created equal” is delusional in this reality where Breonna can be killed by police, unarmed and in her own home and not one officer held to account for her death. What we say we are and how we actually are does not match up. The need to keep saying black lives matter remains.


For me, black lives matter is not partisan or political, it is personal. When I say black lives matter I am talking about veritable lives – black people that I know and that I love. Race may not be your thing – maybe you don’t want to hear about it, think about it or talk about it. But race is consequential to everyone – even white people. White skin does not free us from the deadly costs of our biased system; the deadly cost for white people may not be harm to the physical body but it is death of our wholeness, our souls and our collective humanity (truth be told – our physical bodies are harmed see this article). I am entangled with this system, it has protected and valued me; I must continually look within to root out the ways I live into whiteness and contribute to our system remaining as inequitable and incongruent as it has always been.


This week, our system demonstrated how little it values Breonna’s life, just as it has with black and brown lives before her. Once again, we witness the system profess the inherent worth of all people but invariably act in opposition to this. To this system, I again declare that my non-white loved ones must be unequivocally valued. As our family mourns another innocent black life lost to police violence, my three children voice a wish for their skin be white just like mine. They know who is valued and they see the ways whiteness benefits me. Persistently, we work against what our what our racialized system tells them about who is valued as we definitively affirm their beauty and their worth.


Can we be outraged over this – a racialized arrangement that benefits and protects some while killing others without consequence? How do we help our brown and black kids see their inerasable worth, when they see the value and voices of people like them so frequently and easily erased? What do I do with my kids’ wish for white skin, when I covet the benefits of whiteness for them? Can we agree that it is not too much to expect that our system not kill unarmed black and brown people?


If you cannot find outrage or connect with my questions, please stop saying that everyone matters and all are equal. Even if this is your personal belief, it’s not a truth that our system holds to and it is not the lived truth of many people. When people are suffering and lives continue to be lost, touting personal belief as a though it is collective truth only supports a deadly status quo. We must do and be better.


– Don’t know what to say or do in moments like these? Ask yourself, who are the black and brown people in my life and who do they need me to be right now?


– Want to talk with another white person about race? Let me know. I am a trained therapist and available to talk about difficult and vulnerable things.


– Looking for resources? Here’s a link to some that I’ve found helpful https://jessicakiragu.com/resources/

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