Jordan Edwards was his name. The latest victim of an unwarranted police shooting. He was fifteen, an athlete with a 3.5 GPA, a “loving child with a humble and sharing spirit.”
Most importantly, he didn’t deserve to die. Not like this. None of these kids whose moms are mourning deserved to die, no matter what their GPAs are.
I’m sure Jordan Edwards won’t be the last.
White kids don’t get shot at like this, by the cops—in a car with friends, after a party, with no alcohol on the scene and no evidence that anything aggressive or threatening was happening. White kids aren’t the subject of a cover-up story that is revealed by body camera footage to be totally false.
It just doesn’t happen. And as a white mom of a white boy, I have to acknowledge that I breathe a sigh of relief knowing my son won’t have a target on his back.
And that’s exactly why I say, “Black lives matter,” my friends. No mother should worry that her son has a target on his back because of the color of his skin. No. Mother.
A piece by philosopher George Yancy in the New York Times several years ago asked White America to embrace a new kind of love:
“I’m suggesting a form of love that enables you to see the role that you play (even despite your anti-racist actions) in a system that continues to value black lives on the cheap.
Take one more deep breath. I have another gift.
If you have young children, before you fall off to sleep tonight, I want you to hold your child. Touch your child’s face. Smell your child’s hair. Count the fingers on your child’s hand. See the miracle that is your child. And then, with as much vision as you can muster, I want you to imagine that your child is black.”
This thought experiment reveals that we have a serious problem—it’s called racism, plain and simple. We’re all guilty of it , even us nice liberals, because we live in a society that perpetuates certain stereotypes and false classifications. Racism permeates our everyday, even on the most subconscious level.
But we have a choice: do we ignore it, or do we say out loud that Black lives matter? We must say it, shout it; for, if we don’t, we’ll never believe it, think it, feel it…fight for it.
“But don’t all lives matter?” Duh, of course they do. As the saying goes, all houses matter too, but the one on fire needs the most attention.
And it needs it now
