These are tough times we're living in. The killings of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota, and the subsequent assassination of five police officers in Texas, have renewed a national debate on race relations and police brutality, as well as the prevalence of guns in society, only a month after the tragic massacre in Orlando. From all this violence erupts further bigotry and misunderstanding as these tensions threaten to tear us apart.
Related | Op-Ed: Police Shootings Affect Us All
With "Black Lives Matter" as a rallying call and a movement undeterred, people across the nation are demanding justice and reform to a criminal system that so unfairly targets African-Americans. Yet, others argue that, no, "All Lives Matter" and "Blue Lives Matter," as they blame BLM for the violence perpetrated by one man acting alone and out of any number of emotions created and exacerbated by a climate of unchecked hate and inequity.
The fact that people need to retaliate to a nonviolent movement that seeks only equality and accountability means that opponents to BLM don't know what they're retaliating against. All lives matter, sure. But when you fear that your life can be taken away at any moment based solely on the color of your skin, how do you know that your black life matters? When crooked cops get away with murdering innocent men and children for what inevitably amounts to simply being alive, how can anyone look a mother of that lost soul in her eyes and say that her child's life mattered as much as any white man's.
Black Lives Matter isn't the problem. Ignorance is. It always has been. But maybe that's because memory is fickle.
Slavery only ended 150 years or so ago. The Civil Rights Act, prohibiting discrimination based on race among other factors, only passed 50 years or so ago. Barack Obama became the first black president only seven years ago. With his election, suddenly the words "post-racial America" entered the public consciousness. But America can never be post-race, not when it refuses to acknowledge that race is something it invented. That race is something it has used to oppress a certain group of people upon whose backs it built the empire that stretched from sea to shining sea and overseas. That race is America.
Queer people of color have known this, not only as minorities, but as minorities within a minority. They have deep, personal, firsthand knowledge of the cruelty with which Americans have treated fellow Americans, and that this racial bias is nothing new, but the oldest trick in the book. Many have spoken to that cruelty, often with brilliance and an eloquence that rings true years after they've gone.
Click through the gallery for enlightening quotes on the black experience from queer luminaries such as James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, Alice Walker, Bayard Rustin, and more.
Baldwin was an essayist, poet, playwright, and novelist active through much of the 20th century. His beloved collected essays, Notes of a Native Son, explored race, gender, and sexuality during a time when it was hardly acceptable to be black and gay in America. He’s widely regarded as one of the most important and prolific American writers of all time.
Photo Credit: Allan Warren
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
"I ran away from home. I ran away from St. Louis, and then I ran away from the United States of America, because of that terror of discrimination, that horrible beast which paralyzes one's very soul and body. "
Photo: Carl Van Vechten/Library of Congress
"But, to my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, if he accepts any duties at all from outsiders, to change through the force of his art that old whispering 'I want to be white,' hidden in the aspirations of his people, to 'Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro--and beautiful.'"
Countee Cullen was another prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Cullen was a poet and author who attended NYU and went on to pursue his Master's in English at Harvard University. His poetry and books, like Color and The Ballad of the Brown Girl, endure to this day in the literary zeitgeist.
Photo: Carl Van Vechten/Library of Congress
Photo: Library of Congress
“When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.”
Photo: Allan Warren/Wikimedia Commons
“To be a Negro in this country is really… never to be looked at. What white people see when they look at you is not visible. What they do see when they do look at you is what they have invested you with. What they have invested you with is all the agony, and pain, and the danger, and the passion, and the torment—you know, sin, death, and hell—of which everyone in this country is terrified.”
Photo: Virginia DeBolt/Flickr
"You know, one race will not be a survivor if the other one dies, and that's something that we should think about."
Photo: K. Kendal/Flickr
“To acknowledge privilege is the first step in making it available for wider use. Each of us is blessed in some particular way, whether we recognize our blessings or not. And each one of us, somewhere in our lives, must clear a space within that blessing where she can call upon whatever resources are available to her in the name of something that must be done.”
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
"The greatest movement for social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rooted in a love ethic."
Photo: YouTube
“For black people, being around white people is sometimes like taking care of babies you don't like, babies who throw up on you again and again, but whom you cannot punish, because they're babies.”
Photo: Allan Warren/Wikimedia Commons
“One is born in a white country… when you open your eyes to the world, everything you see: none of it applies to you. You go to white movies and, like everybody else, you fall in love with Joan Crawford, and you root for the Good Guys who are killing off the Indians. It comes as a great psychological collision when you realize all of these things are metaphors for your oppression, and will lead into a kind of psychological warfare in which you may perish.”
Photo: Facebook
"White supremacy to me is not a thing to be hated. But whiteness as a concept is something that I can hate because white supremacy is something that everybody insists upon. The overall universality that whiteness is the norm, that’s the thing that drives me crazy. The people themselves you can take or leave."
Photo: Danielle Levitt/Out
"Every African-American I know has two faces. There's the face that we have for ourselves and the face we put on for white America for the places we have to get to."
Photo: Time
"When I was perceived as a black man I became a threat to public safety. When I was dressed as myself, it was my safety that was threatened."
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
"I can be standing in Barneys with my coat and purse and my selections, and some white woman will say, 'Can you get this in my size?' What she sees is a black woman, and her service button goes off."
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
"If we desire a society in which men are brothers, then we must act towards one another with brotherhood. If we can build such a society, then we would have achieved the ultimate goal of human freedom."
Photo: Ryan Pfluger/Out
"We can’t be satisfied with changing the way we talk about race—we have to keep pushing towards changing the way we act around race, and we need to make sure that no one’s outcome in life will be determined by race and racism."
Photo: PatrisseCullors.com
“On a daily basis, every moment, black folks are being bombarded with images of our death. And after a while that does something to your psyche. It’s literally saying, ‘Black people, you might be next. You will be next.’”
Photo: Ryan Pfluger/Out
"Hate is organized in America. And the hashtag is a reminder that this is true even in digital spaces."
Photo: Carl Van Vechten/Library of Congress
I swear to the Lord,
I still can't see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
"Americans, the eyes of the world are upon you. How can you expect the world to believe in you and respect your preaching of democracy when you yourself treat your colored brothers as you do?"
READER COMMENTS (