Use language that supports Black Lives Matter

Iam writing in response to the June 11 editorial by Lynne Robinson, Tempo editor, called “Dreams from my mother,” which is deservedly generating controversy.

While Robinson’s point seems to be that she supports equality and the protests against racial injustice, her approach to the subject and the language she uses have offended many of us readers who would otherwise be eager to agree with her.

After spotlighting, perhaps overmuch, her own advocacy for equality, she writes, “Black lives matter, but so do red ones, and brown, yellow and white,” using the “but so do” language that by now we have learned to read as being in opposition to the important Black Lives Matter movement, while her reference to people as “red” and “yellow” employs the offensive language of yesteryear.

Troublingly, she repeats, “Yes, black lives matter. But so do all other lives,” again seeming to be challenging the legitimacy of the current and much-needed emphasis on protecting black lives.

Though she acknowledges the whiteness of all our bones and the redness of all our blood, her concluding line unwittingly creates the separation she claims to be against: by asserting “[D]ream we must. And dream big. For all of them and all of us,” she draws the line between an unnamed “them” and “us”... same dream, but separate groups.

Let’s do more than dream, for all of us. One oh-so-small step we can make to further the overdue cause of complete equality for black Americans is to use carefully considered language that clearly supports them.

What bothers me so much about Robinson’s editorial, “Dreams from my mother”? Perhaps that someone – an editor for Tempo – would attempt to speak on behalf of equality and shared humanity, while causing offense and creating separation.

However, another telling – if more subtle – line is, “Here in

Taos, for the most part, people get this – in a tricultural community that has lately come to embrace many others, outsiders all.” By claiming there are three cultures here, and those not of them are “outsiders” to be embraced, she is obliviously creating another exclusion. It’s great that Taos has a large embrace; it would be even better if those enfolded got to be considered “insiders.”

Despite Robinson’s trying to invoke a sense of oneness and acknowledging, as many have, the whiteness of all our bones and the redness of all our blood, she is doing so with language that separates, actually reinforcing an us/them dichotomy throughout, even in her last line, when she is encouraging that we dream “for all of them and for all of us.”

Let’s do more than dream, for all of us.

Taos News, treat the large issues here with more sensitivity, and support language that supports Black Lives Matter.