Eiffel Tower mandala against tricolor
(Image by Collage by Meryl Ann Butler for OpEdNews) Details DMCA
The fountains in Trafalgar square, the Sydney Opera House, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro and New York's World Trade Center were lit up in the French tricolor in response to the terrors in Paris.
But where was the flag of Lebanon a week ago when 43 people were killed by suicide bombers in Beirut?
In the US, every twenty-eight hours a black man, woman, or child is murdered by police or vigilante law enforcement.
The media's message seems to be that if black lives matter, then white lives matter more. But I don't think I can say it better than Diane Gee, who posted this on her Facebook page:
I will not be updating my profile to support France. Sorry. It sucks that people died, always does. But more totally innocent black people are killed by our own cops in a month, every month than were killed there by terrorists. We have our own, unmentionable terrorist here. BTW, they have started killing poor whites too. Will THAT make us finally care?
France is bombing the sh*t out of Syria, and still collecting taxes from a bunch of African nations for its "losses" to slavery and their colonies there. Who mourns that?
I will not indulge in Islamophobia, because the refugees in Europe are going to pay for this, when these are the people they are running from. The people the US and the EU armed, trained and paid for to a great extent. The people they are trying to demonize.
Lastly, so many people have died in the Middle East this week, from the West's attacks as well as ISIS, and no one gives a f*ck that it seems to me to uphold the idea that only white lives matter.
ISIS suicide bombers detonated themselves in the southern part of Beirut last Thursday, killing 43 people and wounding 239 and none of us painted our image in their flag.
I know its impossible to care about every atrocity at once. I know its harder to when your western press propaganda machine doesn't write sensational stories about it. So you never hear about dead brown or black people. And still, innocents died! Yes, I feel for them with the same Mother's instinct that makes every Palestinian child mine, every Somalian child mine, every young Black father my son, every trembling Iranian girl mine.
But does it ever occur to us, how grossly unfair it is to have some lives matter more than others?
I won't. In fact, I should change it back to the rainbow, because GLBT people are still being denied parenthood in the US, even as we attained marriage.
When will all lives matter? When white people acknowledge black and brown losses as dramatically as ones that look like them.
Feel free to block me. I am un-budging on this. I won't damn you for your following the pack, but I sure hope my words make your brains turn a bit before you fall asleep.
She offers plenty to think about.
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