Do Lives Really Matter in America?

Mass shootings. San Berdoo, Orlando.

Police kill some more unarmed young people.

Police themselves are killed during a demonstration.

What are we to make of this?

An oppressed people watch the police kill another of their young boys. The boy was unarmed. The oppressed people have had enough, and band together and cry out in their loudest voice "Stop killing us! We are humans! We are American citizens! WE MATTER!"

Sometimes an oppressed people feel like they do not matter, and sometimes it borders on impossible to convince them that they do matter. Sometimes banding together for solidarity and trying to make your voice loud is the only way to be heard. This is the organic manner in which the "Black Lives Matter" movement manifested.

It's almost as if the call if as much for themselves, to convince themselves that they have a right to demand accountability for grievous mistakes made by police officers.

Notice I shy away from calling what the police do "murder." Their job is ridiculously difficult and dangerous, and training can always be better. Sometimes it is murder. Sometimes decisions are made in split seconds and mistakes happen.

Only these mistakes shred entire families. And these families know that "justice," in the Platonic sense, is not something they will ever taste.

They can't even expect others in law enforcement to acknowledge that a mistake was made.

So they get together and shout to the world that they matter.

Is that point arguable?

One of the demonstrations I saw recently was a group of folks get together and block traffic. I saw footage of this on one of my rare-ish trips to Facebook, only it was posted by people who lauded the drivers who drove through the demonstrations, in many instances running over demonstrators.

"That's what those 'Black Lives Matter' bullies get!" someone said.

"Black Lives Matter" bullies.

Seriously.

I've seen the backlash to this organic demand for relevance in the form of "All Lives Matter." Okay, sure. While I don't disagree with the sentiment, I sometimes think the very ethos of psyche of America disagrees. And in any case, it ignores the long history of oppression and brutality meted out on minority groups---not just the initial "Black" group that started the issue.

Where were all of the "All Lives Matter" people in Ferguson standing tall with the demonstrators there? Was justice being demanded then by everyone?

The Facebook chain of comments on the crowd-crashing video, including me, was nearly exclusively white. My comments were in opposition to the "Good for those drivers!" and "That's a form of kidnapping!" voices that populated the chain. I know that none of those guys really care what a bleeding heart like myself has to say about it.

Sure, your night may be inconvenienced, or even ruined, by a demonstration clogging traffic. That sure does suck, and I'm not even being facetious. But, please, please remember, that these demonstrators are under the impression that any day they leave their house, they may be killed by the police. And worse yet, nobody really cares.

Now, is their concern legitimate, their concern for possible bodily harm by the hands of law enforcement?

Isn't it too bad that that's not even the right question to ask? The right question is: Can we do anything to change the impression that they need to be wary of law enforcement?

As a white guy, I know I certainly haven't lived under the same threats that many minorities experience. But, I have lived in a predominantly black neighborhood for three and a half years, in Brooklyn living off Malcolm X Blvd, and I did teach in South-Central LA for a year, in the unincorporated area of Westmont, at the school where one of the founders of the Crips attended.

And I have to say, having grown up in suburban Sacramento and attending college in lily-white San Luis Obispo, with a little authority on the subject, that Black USA is nearly a different country.

One thing I wanted to ask white people who use phrases like "'Black Lives Matter' Bullies" is this: How many black people live in the one-mile circle radius around your house? Maybe there really are minorities empowered into the realm of obnoxious.

If there is any actual lesson or conclusion that can be taken from Thomas Pynchon's post-modern masterpiece Gravity's Rainbow, it's that America is not in love with winning as much as it's in love with death and killing.

Do lives really matter in America, any lives? People say they do, but I remain unconvinced. This country just has too much violence in its history to buck it off so easily.

Remember Sandy Hook? Guy machine-guns a kindergarten class and we can't even discuss common sense gun-control laws.

I mean, seriously, if a madman machine-gunning a kindergarten classroom doesn't start any actual dialogue, what will?