The Line in the Sand: The Tipping Point of a Dying American System

In hopes that someone who doesn’t look or think like me will read this all the way through, I want to help you see from my perspective why “all lives matter” is the most problematic and infuriating response you can utter from your keyboard. I wonder if you truly understand.

To say someone’s life matters is, at best, a humble statement — at worst, a cry for help. To respond out of your safe, comfortable typing position — to fix your fingers to type these words as a response to people BEGGING to be valued — is to be so deaf that no amount of yelling or writing or peaceful protesting will help you understand what dying people have been saying for centuries.

The pen is only mightier than the sword if there are those educated and willing enough to read what it has written. But we’ve stopped asking you to read. Now we just ask you to watch.

Watch a police offer kneel on an American citizen’s neck with his hand in his pocket (as other officers stand inches away and watch it happen) for minutes as this American citizen begs for his mother, says he can’t breathe, and pleads for air before he dies on the ground, in the street, in handcuffs.

Watch as a country — watch as millions of protestors in several countries — speak up in outrage about what is happening in these Militarized States of America. Only to find that a week later, only one officer was arrested and charged for “accidentally” killing this American citizen.

Watch as unarmed, peaceful protestors are pushed by riot shields, ran over by police vehicles, teargassed in front of churches, shot in the eye with rubber bullets. Watch how BLM protestors find themselves screaming at hoards of white individuals with nothing better to do than create chaos — watch how those protestors beg for these instigators to stop breaking, vandalizing, looting, and burning businesses in low-income communities.

Watch as your president threatens American citizens with military force for exercising their Bill of Rights, failing to mention how the police (who are being protested) are creating violence wherever they go.

Watch as your president uses the Bible as a prop in front of the church that police — in the nation’s capital — teargassed priests, nurses, and peaceful protestors away from for the sake of a photo opp.

Watch as African-Americans (who have been shown to be disproportionally vulnerable to the coronavirus due to the many ways in which our country’s healthcare system has failed us) risk their health at the hands of both police and disease just to let you know that their lives matter too.

And watch as the media’s noise and your president’s comments and the bias-reenforcing echo chamber that is social media numbs you to all of this injustice and provokes you to think that you, a Caucasian American in 2020, are somehow in danger. Watch yourself as the chaos and noise tempts you to make this situation “US vs. THEM”, when it is really “US vs. IT”.

Dear White Friends, Acquaintances, and People in General:

You are not in danger. You are not being systematically hunted. So please take a deep breath. You need not respond to every post that makes you feel uncomfortable with trolling and vitriol. I repeat — you are not in danger. Unless you are selflessly shielding black protestors right now, treating black people like humans worthy of life does not put your own life at risk.

The only thing in danger right now — besides our lives — is a system that has brought you much comfort and wealth and power and privilege over the centuries. That system is now on life support. It will crumble. It will die. Because it was built on a lie — that white people are superior — and like all lies, it will fail. The truth will win out like it always does. The truth will set us free.

Losing your power and privilege is uncomfortable. But it is no less uncomfortable than having a knee casually, intentionally, and unregrettably lodged into your neck for 9 minutes as the world watches your last bits of oxygen get snuffed out of you.

This system is going to break. If you claim to love God and follow Christ, you know that this crumbling is long overdue. It will happen with or without you. But your support and voice matters. Your voice can help make this a world that is safe for everyone, not just people who look like you. So use your voice productively. Don’t clap back with your casual “all lives matter” routine just to dilute someone else’s voice. Don’t be a troll. Don’t run away from the discomfort. Embrace it.

Share this, argue if you must. But don’t just ignore and keep telling yourself the same old stories. There’s a new generation of voices in town and we’re not putting up with this anymore.

Have the difficult conversations you need to have. Ask the embarrassing questions that you want to ask. But do so with haste, because there is work to be done.

Use your voice and use your vote to shape the future you want to see. But don’t hide in the middle, and don’t hide in your comfort zone. That train has left.

When this ends, life may feel the same after a while, but life will not be the same. You will have to pick a side. And you will have to fight. Because you are either for systemic racial oppression or you are against it.

If you are for it, I promise this won’t end how you want it to. If you are against it — if you don’t believe my life is any less valuable than yours — then you will need to do something with that belief.

The era of complacency and silent complicity in America is coming to an end.