We need to stand together as a community (parents, school administration, teachers, union officials, students, etc.). We cannot continue to live in fear of retaliation from hateful groups of people. We cannot let ignorance and racism deter us from making Black Lives Matter in our schools.
The Seattle community chose to band together and continue their movement despite hate groups threatening to bomb an elementary school in Seattle. We need to show people who choose to live in ignorance that we will not be moved. We will not be pushed back to the days where our voices did not matter. Like Seattle Seahawk Pro Bowl defensive end Michael Bennett said, “Some people believe the change [must] come from the government, but I believe it has to be organic and come from the bottom. The campaign around making Black Lives Matter in Seattle schools did not originate from people in office. It originated from community members who were fed up seeing youth of color being oppressed by an institutional system.
If we follow Seattle Washington’s lead and acknowledge the systems of privilege that are oppressing our black youth, we can shake up the institutions by instilling the 3-point policy set forth. Which calls for supporting ethnic studies in schools, replacing zero tolerance discipline with restorative justice practices, and de-tracking classes within the schools to undo the racial segregation that is reinforced by tracking. I would like to see this policy proposal within the Providence Public School District.
Towards the end of the Black Lives Matter article, white liberals in response to the campaign expressed that, “We should be colorblind because all lives matter’. Excuse my language but I see this as being nothing more than bullshit. If all lives mattered, we wouldn’t have so many black youths being killed by police officers. If all lives mattered, we wouldn’t have illegal immigrants being deported or detained in detention camps. If all lives mattered, there would be an equal amount of news coverage for black children who are declared missing by family members. When Natalie Holloway went missing, her story was aired on countless news stations day after day. I guarantee you, there were Black and Hispanic children who were missing around the same time as Natalie Holloway and did not receive the same amount of news coverage as she did. So, when people say all lives matter it really pisses me off. If you want to continue to live in a world of color blindness, that’s your right to ignorance. Just don’t try to rub that ignorance off on everyone else!
Thank you for your post Essence and for the powerful final paragraph. It is exhausting (even for me as a white woman and of course so much less so than for POC), to constantly have to establish the reality and real life impacts of racism. I attended a training last week and for three hours they bombarded us with statistics to demonstrate that racism is real and harmful. It seemed like the presentation was one long rebuttal to the "all lives matter" folks. But it seems like this business of constantly making the case over and over again prevents us from getting to work to actually dismantle racism and oppression.
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