Black Lives Matter-Still

By Joi Odom Grant

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Black lives matter-still! #‎BlackLivesMatter is a national call to action and a response to “anti-black racism,” a new prejudicial term that seems to be gaining in popularity lately. Liberal and progressive pundits use the term with regularity when describing the remarkable frequency of officer-involved shootings of black people, or the fact that one in 13 African Americans have been stripped of their right to vote by felon disenfranchisement, a form of collateral punishment that has always disproportionately affected black people.
We take this time to remind ourselves that all lives matter, in particularly black lives, with the emphasis on our black men, the negro male, black boy, the African-American man. This type of message is sometimes overlooked because of the sensitivity of the content. It has happened all too many times – we hear on the news that a black male has been murdered, found dead, shot, stabbed, burned or just simply harassed. Yes, we can cause our own problems too, but in this case, we are looking at those who died at the hands of law enforcement. It is evident that black men were and still are contributors to this society. Visualize a black man in your life, your father, your pastor, your brother, your son, your husband, your deacon, a cousin or a friend. They were conceived, they were born, they matter.

Melissa Harris Perry’s powerful tribute to unarmed black men killed by police on MSNBC brought light to this national cause. She began her statement by naming numerous unarmed black men who were killed by police throughout the last 10 years — ending with the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO.

“In the past decade alone, these men and hundreds of others have lost their lives to police,” she said. “From 2006 to 2012, a white police officer killed a black person at least twice a week in this country.”

So where do we go from here because we are standing on the shoulders of so many great men? We owe it to our ancestors and we owe it to ourselves. It’s time for a conversation, a time to inform, a time to educate and then repeat the process. I do not know what it is like to be a black man. I just know I need one. I am a black woman with a black father, a black husband, a black brother, a black godson, a black nephew, a black uncle, a black brother-in-law, a black cousin and my ancestry tells me I come from a generation of strong black men – the late Rev. R.M Lee and Rev. E.D. Odom. Never, ever do I want to hear their names in a Roll Call such as this….