This is part of the Book of Plagues manuscript.
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All lives, all lives you say
I can see you are afraid
Your skin is so thin
Your heart has escaped
All lives, all lives you say“All Lives, You Say?” — Wilco
I don’t see color. This is what they say. Wasn’t raised that way, but. Always a but. Always an excuse. // American racism is baked into the system. Ingrained embedded. It’s not just about hate. That’s the error. It’s structural. A legacy of slavery, Jim Crow. // It’s what you see, a student tells me. What people assume. He’s Black. But not Black, he says. Dark skinned. Child of a Cuban father, Puerto Rican mother. He contains multitudes. // we read an essay by Robin D.G. Kelley. My student identifies. He gets asked the question. Answers. Knows he’s a target because of his skin. // I’m an easy target, another student from another school says. He’s black. Maybe 18. A freshman. He was in his front yard. Minding his own business. Cops roll up. Stop. Ask for ID. It was his house. Lived there for years. // So many ways that could’ve gone wrong, a friend tells me. A cross word. A look. Anything. This is the reality for Black Americans. One my whiteness allows me not to see. Not experience. Not directly. // A woman tells me the phrase, Black lives matter is racist. It excludes, she says. It means other lives don’t matter. She’s white. Tells me she has hundreds of Black friends. Tells them the same thing. Black lives matter is a racist phrase. // It is summer. Protests fill city streets. Demand justice. For George Floyd. Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. Black lives erased. By police. By vigilantes. Because they were Black. There’s no other way to say this. // Black lives in America have rarely mattered. Kidnapped. Enslaved. Whipped. Hung from trees. Literal chattel. // Blacks are more likely to get sick from COVID than whites. To die. From COVID. From cancer. In childbirth. Killed by police in greater numbers. Stopped. Arrested. Jailed. // BLM, writes a Joshua K. Krassner, a philosophy professor (https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-0114-blm-patriots-20210113-5dwwx5r75veufp4fyb7i2alfkq-story.html), “is based on the proposition that our institutions have, for too many and for too long, failed to live up to their promise.” The promise of equality. Of justice. Of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is the promise demanded by the Rev. King. A promise still denied to too many. // “The BLM movement merely demands that this promise be fulfilled,” Krassner writes. “The BLM movement leans on our shared political values — liberty, equality of opportunity and the rule of law — to point out that our collective political project is not finished.” // The phrase “all lives matter” erases Black lives, because it does not account for the special challenges of being Black in America. Assumes all lives face the same roadblocks. Similar trials. Identical threats. // This is about police, but only partly about police. This is about police and banks. Real estate and school systems. This is about legacies. About lives lived in fear. // We don’t want favors, the sign says. Get your knees off our throats. //