“For years now, healing I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never’” wrote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Letters from a Birmingham Jail, 1963. King articulated the resentment felt as he continued in his letter, “when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodiness’— then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait”

The personhood of Black people in this country, and a lack of value given to their basic humanity, is what Dr. King is referencing when he speaks of fighting a degenerating sense of nobodiness.  Given the rash of recent police shootings, encounters with law enforcement involving unarmed Black males as young as 12 years of age, and the lack of any charges filed or even any “appearance” of impartiality in the processes employed to investigate the officers involved, there is a degenerating sense of nobodiness within the Black community that is difficult to reconcile.  What is trending on Twitter is #BlackLivesMatter. But the question remains, Do they really?

To say that people were disappointed about the decision by the grand jury in Ferguson is clear. The fact that the grand jury decided that there was nothing at all that occurred in the shooting death of Michael Brown in early August that would cause them to bring an indictment, on any charge, against the police officer involved seemed a gross miscarriage of justice. Although not surprising, it was still extremely disheartening. Most people in the Black community could read the writing on the wall as clearly as they perceived the “set-up” and the “stacked deck” that the history of racial relations in America informs and the lines of division and inequity which continue to define who we are as a nation.  Unfortunately, there are still two separate systems of justice in America and the denial of that fact is as dangerous as the fact itself.

There is a campaign to equip all law enforcement across the country with body cameras so that their encounters with the citizens they are sworn to serve and protect are recorded. The premise being that the documenting video would be the evidence that could either exonerate or convict “rogue officers” in cases of use of deadly force.  It sounds good, but when there is such blatant denial and disregard for the facts and statistics presently offered over sustained periods of time documenting the disparity and inequities present in policing, racial profiling, and the overall practice of the law and the judicial system where people of color are involved, there is little hope that even documenting evidence offered by video recording will serve to effectively change the ideas and beliefs about Black people, and Black males in particular, that have been historically acculturated into the psyche of white America.

The only hope is that people of all races join together and collectively assert that #BlackLivesMatter. We must resolve that we cannot continue to ‘Wait’, because we are fighting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodiness’! We must align ourselves one with another in solidarity for the cause of human rights for ALL people. Black lives matter as much as any other human life. The alternative of degenerating hopelessness is NOT an option.

Dr.T
Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, Ph.D.
Founder and Artistic Director
The Conciliation Project and
Associate Professor
Virginia Commonwealth University
DrT@Margins2theCenter.com
www.theconciliationproject.org

Up Next Week:  Our better angels…”Tis the season”