Something that Malcolm X pointed out frequently was that President John F. Kennedy was moved to act on civil rights not because African Americans were being brutalized simply for demanding equal treatment. During the Birmingham campaign the federal government took no action as peaceful demonstrators were being attacked by dogs and sprayed with fire hoses. During the campaign Martin Luther King’s house was also bombed. Birmingham was a place where explosives were used to murder and terrorize African Americans so frequently that the city was nicknamed “Bombingham.”
President Kennedy stood back and did nothing as the peaceful demonstrators were being attacked, but he was swift to attack after the African Americans in Birmingham began rioting. In the ensuing riot a police officer was stabbed. Kennedy promptly responded to the situation by sending federal troops to restore order in Birmingham. The troops were not deployed when African Americans were being brutalized, but when African Americans began rioting President Kennedy was forced to address the situation.
This incident from the civil rights movement speaks to the fact that the lives of black people are of no value. Our suffering and our dying is largely ignored until we act in ways that makes our anger and frustrations known. The rioting that took place in Ferguson in 2014 and the 2015 riots in Baltimore are more examples of this fact. The riots were condemned by many people, including President Barack Obama, but Obama was also forced to address the situation in those cities by sending the Department of Justice to conduct investigations into the police departments of those cities. The investigations concluded that there was great deal of racial bias and civil rights violations by the police in both cities, but had African Americans in those cities not risen up and made their frustrations known through rioting then there would have been no investigation in the first place.
Police violence against African Americans is not a new issue, but Black Lives Matter has brought national attention to an issue that was otherwise ignored. Even the people who have criticized Black Lives Matter and have criticized Colin Kaepernick are now forced to engage in a conversation about racism and policing that they otherwise would have ignored. After all, no one was saying that “all lives matter” before the Black Lives Matter movement came about. No one was saying “blue lives matter” before the Black Lives Matter movement either. The anger and frustration of African Americans has forced people who otherwise would have ignored the suffering of African Americans to react. Even if that reaction is a negative reaction towards Black Lives Matter, it is still a reaction that would have never occurred had African Americans remained passive about the injustices that are inflicted upon us.
The reality of the world that we live in is that the lives of African people do not matter and our suffering is ignored until we stand up and do something to address that suffering. Even if in standing up we are met with criticisms or backlash, this simply demonstrates that even the ones who are content to ignore our suffering when we suffer in silence have no chose but to notice us when stand up.
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