Deeper Writing (and Reading) of the World: BLACK LIVES MATTER...TOO: LETS TALK

I
A Statement

Black lives matter.

It happened again
and again yesterday
and still yet again today.

All lives matter was the retort
ignoring
canceling
the first statement
speaking from a stance
of moral certainty
of statistical, historical, and societal privilege
assuming the right
to change, not just the topic
but the entire conversation
and in the process
missing the message
losing the focus
diluting
denying
deleting
the critical point.

Black lives matter.

When the conversation gets changed
Black lives get lost
forgotten
amidst the politically correct
pretense of equity and inclusivity
of all concerns
that swallows the specificity
of this one concern
and deliberately
systematically
systemically
eliminates
Black bodies
and lives.

No one denies that All Lives Matter.
We just want Black Lives to be included in All... always)

Black lives matter
not instead of but
in addition to.

Black lives matter... too.

II
A Question

In your classroom all of your students matter. They all have individual and specific needs. Together they also have general and collective needs.

But for the past four days, one student has been coming late, hungry, dirtier than normal, without her homework. Once in the classroom, she is unable to concentrate, sits and rocks, mumbles to herself, and cries often. On day four you notice bruises and swelling on her face and arms. She flinches when you walk toward her.

All of your students matter, but right now this is a crisis. This student matters.

What do you do?

Do you ignore this singular, elevating, obvious crisis and keep insisting that all students matter?

Or do you address the immediate concern at hand and acknowledge that this student matters right this minute?

What do you do?

III
A Conversation?

Black lives matter.

No, All lives matter.

But black lives matter, too.

We need to talk.

We really need to talk.

So, let's talk.

IV
Resources For the Conversation

Let's talk, indeed.
There are lots of places we can begin our conversations.
We can simply tell our own stories.
We can listen to each others' stories respectfully and deeply in order to hear and learn and digest.

How do our stories differ?
Where do they intersect and connect?
What does the space where our stories meet signify?

Depending on who you are, who you know, and where you live, you may not know about or understand the experiences of people of color in general and African Americans specifically, that have led to a nationwide discussion about black lives and reopened a conversation that should have been ongoing. You may know only about the many police killings, but not much about daily life experiences.

Two recent and excellent books offer perfect places to begin our consideration of daily-walking- around-driving around-wanting- to- just- live-our-lives lives of black folks.

Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine offers us glimpses into her own daily life and that of others in the public eye, including Serena Williams. In an earlier blog post about this book I wrote:

Her poems/prose call us to look again and again at isolated incidents, that taken one by one might be hurtful or dismissive or disrespectful, but because of their familiarity, perhaps not given a second thought.
Her poems/prose hold up a magnifying glass to those encounters that we have experienced, yet not truly registered and processed fully because they happen every day.
What happens if we pile them all together creating a landscape we can't escape?
Incident after incident, comment after comment.
The powerful subtleties and toxicities of living black in America-- every day

Read the entire post, An American Lyric:Claudia Rankine here.

Ta-nehisi Coates offers in Between the World and Me, an opportunity to also consider the experience of inhabiting a black body in this world, as he writes a letter to his son explaining and exploring how he came to understand his person. place, purpose, as well as ways forward.

And in eight thought-provoking essays, Cornell West addresses controversial and relevant issues concerning race in America in his now classic Race Matters.

Julius Lester offers many suggestions for possible conversations for both children and adults in Let's Talk About Race.

History will enter your conversations. Here are several resources to help remind you of the history you know, as well as inform and correct the misconceptions you may have been taught or the events and concepts you were not taught at all.

In Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans, Kadir Nelson presents a powerful view of both our proudest and most shameful moments in history along with his characteristic illustrations.