Message on a T-shirt

One of my Father’s Day gifts was a T-shirt. It is black with white letters: BLACK LIVES MATTER. Now, why would a white Baby Boomer wear a BLACK LIVES MATTER T-shirt?

First, for those who think that BLACK LIVES MATTER means other lives don’t, let me explain. BLM doesn’t mean the lives of white folks don’t matter. Lord, no. If you’re white, and especially a male, growing up in the home of the brave and the land of the free, your life has always mattered. In fact, the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were written just for you. Yes, check it out.

This doesn’t mean your life has always been easy, or that there are times when you, as a person, haven’t been treated poorly, or been devalued. There are many forces in our world today that devalue humans, regardless of their race, religion or origin. But, if you’re white, I doubt you have ever been kept from voting, or buying a house, or getting a loan, or getting a job, solely because of the color of your skin. I doubt you have heard racist slurs, or been stopped, harassed, or beaten on the way home, or had your house or church fire-bombed.

And I don’t think you can ever know, as I cannot, what it is like to carry the psychological weight of dehumanization caused over centuries by kidnapping, enslavement, lynching, cross-burning, assassination, segregation, or the simple knowledge that there are people who fear, shun or hate you solely because of your skin color.

One of my students, a bright young woman of Haitian background, once asked me in a class discussion if I saw myself as racist. I don’t want to, I replied, but I know it was in the water I grew up drinking. Yes, I have reflex tendencies that are racist. As a child, I lived in a home where Martin Luther King, Jr., was seen as a trouble maker. Sometimes, still, I have to check my reactions, consciously shift my thoughts to what I know is true, to what I believe in, that all humans, regardless of skin color, are children of God and deserving of respect. I’m a work in progress.

In the meantime, I’ve been wondering. What if, in Germany in the 1930s, before Kristallnacht and the death camps, Germans started putting signs in their windows that read: JEWISH LIVES MATTER? What if the people, 95 percent of whom were Christians, had stood up against the dehumanization of their Jewish brothers and sisters.

What if we not only spoke up, but acted for all those marginalized in our community, making real the words “with liberty and justice for all”?

In the meantime, don’t be surprised if you see me walking down Main Street. I’ll have my mask on, and I just might be wearing a T-shirt with BLACK LIVES MATTER.

Note: Ben Jacques is professor emeritus at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and the author of In Graves Unmarked: Slavery & Abolition in Stoneham, Mass.