New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Black Lives Matter because all lives matter
“Taking a knee” can mean dramatically different things in different situations. Starting during the NFL’s 2016 football season, quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and ended up getting essentially “blackballed” by all NFL teams.
On May 25, 2020, Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin “took a knee” for 8 minutes and 45 seconds to the neck of George Floyd, who died. The world has not been the same since. Outrage literally spread around the world with people from all kinds of cultural backgrounds taking to the streets and, yes, taking a knee in protest. The traumatizing impact of almost weekly police or vigilante killings of people like Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd are recent deadly manifestations of a racism that has permeated the United States’ culture since its inception. Suddenly, America’s long, sordid history of race-related violence had gone viral.
However, just because we are outraged, it does not mean that we have to lose our minds or our morals. We can be rational and ethical even though we are outraged. What this current understandable feeling of outrage often leads to is an insistence that Black Lives Matter cannot be said in conjunction with the phrase “All Lives Matter.”
I believe that, ethically speaking, “Black Lives Matter” because “All Lives Matter.”
I have a very personal and painful connection to this issue because my son,
Malik Jones, died at the end of what should have been a routine traffic stop on April 14, 1997, when, after a chase that ended in New Haven, an East Haven police officer, Robert Flodquist, ran up to his car, shattered the driver’s side front window with his gun butt and shot my baby several times at close range. Within 2 weeks of the killing, I spoke directly by phone separately to the then-mayor of East Haven and then to the thenchairman of East Haven’s police commission and asked them both the same question followed by some very specific advice. The question was, “Do you have any young men in your family who is at or around 21 years of age (Malik’s age at the time of his death)”? They both answered yes. I then advised both of them that if they participated in the defensive “circle the wagons” mentality that cities and police departments often adopt in the wake of such police-involved shootings, the streets of Connecticut would be less safe for all citizens.
Sadly, on July 14, 1999, a little more than two years after Malik’s deadly encounter with the East Haven police officer, the headline for an article in the Hartford Courant read, “Cop Shot Woman Through Car’s Side Window.” Google it. The story was about a 40-year-old white woman, Victoria Cooper, who, like Malik, ended up dead at the end of what should have been a routine traffic stop on July 13, 1999, in nearby North Branford. The news story also discussed Malik’s killing because of the similar circumstances. Black Lives Matter because All Lives Matter.
In addition, when we examine the recent history of the United States, three dates will help us to understand why we should connect Black Lives Matter to All Lives Matter.
The dates are: May 2, 1927; Jan. 10, 2005; and Oct. 27, 2018.
May 2, 1927 — “Liberal” Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr. famously declared that “3 generations of imbeciles are enough” in the 8-1 Buck v. Bell decision that helped to fuel the infamous eugenics movement (focused on creating a “purer” white race). Beginning with a poor, teen-aged white Virginia woman named Carrie S. Buck, between 1927 and the 1970s, more than 60,000 U.S. citizens were forcibly sterilized under various state laws. The first targets were institutionalized whites (in trying to improve the white race), and then ultimately included Blacks and other people of color. Black Lives Matter because All Lives Matter.
Jan. 10, 2005 — Dr. Jameela Yasmeen Arshad died in the back seat of a police cruiser in Kenner, La., because she stopped to help a boy hit by a car. The officers at the scene refused to believe that this Black woman could be the accomplished, well-respected medical doctor that she was. I bring her up in this context because when we talk about “Black Lives Matter,” we tend to focus on young Black men like my son, Malik Jones, and we fail to highlight how frequently such policeinvolved killings victims are Black women. Black Lives Matter because All Lives Matter.
Oct. 27, 2018 — Ninetyseven-year-old Rose Mallinger was murdered along with 10 others simply for “worshipping while Jewish” at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue. According to the Nov. 10, 2018, edition of the Pittsburgh Gazette, Robert Bowers, the terrorist who killed her, shared material online from the Christian Identity Movement. The Christian Identity Movement believes that “people of European descent are the ‘chosen people,’ Jews are their enemy and other races are meant to be exterminated or enslaved.” It is a small wonder that even the current U.S. Department of Homeland Secretary sees the white supremacy movement as the greatest violent threat to America today.
Concerned people of faith and concerned people of no faith must understand and act on the reality that the Black Lives Matter movement is not only about race, but about the safety, security and humanity of all of us who inhabit this land. Black Lives Matter because All Lives Matter.