'Open the Economy' Is the New 'White Lives Matter'
“Give me liberty or give me death” — A slaveowner
What is America?
Is it a plot of dirt littered with the discarded bones of those who stood in the way of white manifest destiny or is it a Constitution? Is it an assemblage of huddled masses yearning to breathe free or is it simply a series of borders on a map? Is the idea of liberty and justice even a real thing or is it an apparition that only white people can see?
If you are black, these are not rhetorical questions. In the real America, rhetoric, liberty and justice are concepts afforded to the people whose birthright and skin color give them the freedom to contemplate theoretical abstractions. The rest of us are simply speed bumps and potholes along the path of white privilege treasure hunters. We are bodies meant for sacrifice...
And they are liars.
Somehow, their idea of “liberty and justice for all” excludes mass incarceration or the war on drugs black people. When small-government conservatives advocate for “states’ rights,” they are not talking about the black and brown people who live in Republican-controlled Southern states. The evangelical Christian, “pro-life” propaganda does not include the people awaiting execution on death row who are 55 percent black. When they insist that “All Lives Matter,” they are not even referring to us.
https://www.theroot.com/open-the-economy-is-the-new-white-lives-matter-1842987034
“Give me liberty or give me death” — A slaveowner
What is America?
Is it a plot of dirt littered with the discarded bones of those who stood in the way of white manifest destiny or is it a Constitution? Is it an assemblage of huddled masses yearning to breathe free or is it simply a series of borders on a map? Is the idea of liberty and justice even a real thing or is it an apparition that only white people can see?
If you are black, these are not rhetorical questions. In the real America, rhetoric, liberty and justice are concepts afforded to the people whose birthright and skin color give them the freedom to contemplate theoretical abstractions. The rest of us are simply speed bumps and potholes along the path of white privilege treasure hunters. We are bodies meant for sacrifice...
And they are liars.
Somehow, their idea of “liberty and justice for all” excludes mass incarceration or the war on drugs black people. When small-government conservatives advocate for “states’ rights,” they are not talking about the black and brown people who live in Republican-controlled Southern states. The evangelical Christian, “pro-life” propaganda does not include the people awaiting execution on death row who are 55 percent black. When they insist that “All Lives Matter,” they are not even referring to us.
https://www.theroot.com/open-the-economy-is-the-new-white-lives-matter-1842987034