Quinn Hunter
 Layout Editor

I do not and will never condone the violence that has happened in connection to the #BlackLiveMatter movement. I also recognize that my colleague above has made some valid points; however, the way in which those points have been made is in a condescending tone, devaluing all that has been said.

You have not known silence, until one who can never understand your pain tells you how to fix it.

The anger that is at the heart of the #BlackLivesMatter movement is not just the outcry of the lost lives of a few young black men. It is the pent-up emotion of 250-plus years of slavery, mistreatment and systematic scrutiny of our families— from the young woman who was forced to have child after child, only to have them ripped away from her and sold off to another plantation, or to the young man who walks down the street avoiding the police because he knows he will be racially profiled.

To critique the movement of a group that has been trying to remove the burden off their skin for the past century and compare it to a younger movement, were the flame of effort fizzled out, is to shoot one’s self in the foot.

The name #BlackLivesMatter is new but the movement is not. The movement began when slaves ran toward the North for freedom, because they knew that they were worth more— that they mattered.  That movement never ended, not in the black community. It has risen time and time again throughout history, called by many different names: the civil right movement, Brown V. Board, Black Power, Loving v. Virginia and, now, #BlackLivesMatter.

They all asked for the same thing— to be treated and allowed to live with the same equal privileges. Asking for the same thing as your great-great-great grandparents is maddening. Being followed around a store is maddening. Hearing that a young woman who dresses, talks and looks like you died in judicial custody is frightening.

Many do not know that growing up in a black household means there are different lessons taught— lessons to make you seem less “frightening” or “stereotypical.” My mother, for example, did not allow my brother or me to own certain items of clothing because of the possible message they could carry. She thought about how our names would be perceived on a resume way before we were born.

Do not say you condone my pain because you don’t. Do not confuse your white guilt with my black pride.

Do not say you can sympathize and understand what it means to move for equality when there is an entire institution set up for us to fail.

I’m so tired of defending my life. But more than that I am tired of defending why black people are so angry. Today, the black community does not have a strong leader to look to or follow. Nothing has come close to the 1963 march on Washington. No one face is knocking on Congress’s door and demanding change. Instead, small waves are made, never quite joining together to make a tidal wave of change.

During the 1950s and ’60s the black community had clear leaders who spoke out for equality and rights. They went about protesting in different ways: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s civil disobedience and Malcolm X’s Nation teachings. The movement had different ideals about how to change things, but they agreed that things needed to be changed.

Asking for a fair and objective legal system that is transparent and easy to understand, but knowing that half of that will never come to be— asking for once that a just and due process is served is not an unreasonable demand. It would not be double jeopardy, as my colleague argues, because many of the officers were never even indicted.

But the insensitive and misguided argument doesn’t stop there. As stated in the opposing article: “Clinton… [suggested] that rather than appealing to white people’s feelings, the Black Lives movement present the country with a set of realistic policy proposals.”

Read between the lines. This says more or less: “White people will never care about black feelings; find something more reasonable to ask for.” First, this is just not true. If it were true that whites don’t care about black feelings, the civil rights movement would not have succeeded. The multi-cultural support is what helps a movement gain momentum and ground.

What it comes down to is this is not a policy issue; what more policies can we even possibly make? It’s already illegal to be racist. No, this is a human issue. Of course this movement is about feelings. And these feelings are not unreasonable or unrealistic.

It is, in fact, completely realistic to ask one human to care about another. You say come to us with policy, and that will fix the problem— give us “realistic” solutions and everything will be better. But nowhere in the process of bringing these so-called solutions have the feelings and the strong emotions that have led to these problems in the first place been addressed.  So, all you have is a “policy fix” that does nothing but give false hope.

Movements are driven by passion, not by asserting yourself dominantly in a world that has already put you there.

I will never turn away an ally, but when someone from outside of a cultural group critiques that group’s attempts for equality, I can only assume that they attempt to make an ass out of themselves and me. Maybe they should stay on their own track.