Black Lives Matter

My Quilt Part 2

Bev Ryan made me a quilt. It is a beautiful thing with twelve of my favorite all-time t-shirts set in a gold-flecked blue background. As I look at it, I can see that it in one way tells the story of my life. I was a t-shirt collector for several decades. When the shirts wore out, I replaced them with solid black t’s and Charlene commissioned Bev to make the quilt as a thank you for my help formatting her new book and getting all the pictures in the right places: See it here: Roberta

That leaves me with an opportunity to write a short piece about each shirt on the quilt. I already started with my blog last November called Stand in the Gap.

If I am to move left to right, top to bottom, today’s story is about my Black Lives Matter

shirt. I bought it at the Black Lives Matter booth at the Minnesota State Fair. Charlene and I spent a few minutes there talking with a courteous young man who was staffing the booth. 

The slogan grew from a series of young Black men who were shot and killed by police officers across the country. Please understand that I have a son who is a Saint Paul Police Officer and a Thin Blue Line sticker on the back window of our van. I do understand that some of the dead men left the officer with no other choice. But I also understand that some of the officers in question turned to deadly force too quickly.

Some of my friends have countered the shirt with “all lives matter” but that misses the point. It is our stereotypical fear of Black men that has left so many of them dying in the streets. It is Black men who need the community to stand up for them and I have worn the shirt with pride.

For more on the topic, see my book Growing Up White.

Argument Made by Redefining Terms

Recently I have run into three books all with the same malady. I hope it is not contagious. What these authors are doing is beginning their works by redefining one of the words that is central to their subject matter, then proceeding to build the entire argument of their book on the redefined word. It is not a fair way to approach a topic. 

I first ran into it in a religious book that began by redefining “created’ as used in Genesis. Now it would have been okay with me if the author had simply explained that the ancient Hebrew word translated as “created” had a broader or deeper meaning, but it seemed to me that he had explained away the creation by redefining the word. To him “created” meant that God had moved into the world He had made earlier.

But then I ran into the book I am finishing now. It is about race, one of my favorite subjects lately. In fact, I wrote a book on the topic titled “Growing Up White in the Heart of Memphis” (amazon.com/author/davidmay). I’ve done a lot of thinking about it and I truly believe that I am not a racist. This author, a white woman, writing about what makes it hard for White people to talk about race, began with a redefinition of “racism.” She defined it very broadly, then painted all White people with a broad (White) brush, concluding that all White people are racist. She says we cannot avoid it. It is a result of the White privilege we have grown up with and the White dominated culture in which we live. Then she went on lay out an argument that strongly implied that if you disagreed with anything she said, that proves you are a racist. 

The woman writing about race had some good points and pointed out some things I need to pay more attention to, but her stereotyping of all White people as racists and her redefinition of terms colored the rest of the book. Likewise, the man writing about creation made some interesting points and the group that was discussing the book had some good conversations about it. Nevertheless, redefining commonly accepted terms is not a fair way to begin a conversation, especially a one-way discussion like a book.