Black Lives Matter, Too

I thoroughly enjoyed reading both the “All Lives Matter” article by Kevin Roose and the article by Peggy McIntosh titled “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. As someone who is white, I found the articles to be eye-opening. 

The “All Lives Matter” article has given me a whole new perspective on the issue. Before reading this, I did not fully understand the issue with saying “All Lives Matter”. All lives do matter, so what’s the issue? After reading this article I can grasp what the issue is. First, Roose says that “Black Lives Matter” is not meant to be interpreted as “ONLY black lives matter”, but as “black lives matter, too”. I understood this before but I feel it is important to point out because so many people do not understand this clarification. Roose incorporates a Reddit post about saying “All Lives Matter” which truly taught me something. The post says that saying “All Lives Matter” is a great sentiment, but in fact that it is silencing the problem at hand. It draws attention away from the issue that black lives are not being treated as being as significant as white lives.  

In her article, McIntosh compares white privilege to “an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.” In essence, white people have a metaphorical backpack of tools that they have not earned which makes it easier to navigate through life. Mcintosh says that whites are taught not to recognize white privilege. Personally, I have always been aware of white privilege. I make it a point to be aware because awareness is the first step towards change. However, while I was reading the list of privileges in the article, I realized that white privilege includes a lot more than I thought. For example, McIntosh says, “I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin”. I would never think of buying Band-Aids that match my skin as a privilege, but yet in fact it is. White people have advantages in almost every aspect of life. 

McIntosh also talks about the two types of privilege, unearned advantage and conferred dominance. We have learned about these two types of privilege in class before. The first article we read in this class by Johnson refers to this exact McIntosh article and elaborates on the two types of privilege. 

This photo embodies the idea of white privilege. The course is made easy for the white man to get to the end. He has no obstacles in his way. This cartoon comes from a post on medium.com by Erik Engheim on white privilege. 

I have included the link  to a video clip from CNN which addresses whether or not "Black Lives Matter" is a racist movement. One man gives his opinion that saying "Black Lives Matter" is a racist movement and an audience member responds to this using a metaphor very similar to the one included in the Roose article. 

A question I would like to pose to the class: do you feel that the "Black Lives Matter" movement is a racist movement?