What Black Lives Matter Means to Me

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is not about anyone else’s life not mattering.  It is just a long overdue recognition that black lives matter.

Let’s take a look at the American example regarding black lives.  From the very beginning of the United States of America (USA), black lives didn’t matter the same as all other lives.  Even the original Constitution counted a black life as three-fifths of a life and the voting rights to the three-fifths of a life were given to slave owners rather than the person being counted.

Move forward to the 1960s, more than 184 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, when Congress finally began to recognize the disparity through legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  More recently in the early half of 2020, almost 244 years after the Declaration of Independence, a policeman murders George Floyd in front of hundreds of onlookers as though George’s life didn’t matter.

In America, the Land of the Free and the Melting Pot that was to serve as an example to the rest of the world, We the People of the USA are still struggling to find what our Country is all about.  White lives have always mattered more than any other life in America.  Non-white lives that weren’t black lives were always treated by law better than black lives.  Very few people who support BLM are saying other lives don’t matter.  They are just saying it’s time for the world to recognize that black lives matter just as much as anyone else.