Letter of the Day | Black and all lives matter
Published:Monday | June 8, 2020 | 12:19 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
THE CURRENT happenings against blacks in the United States are damning, to say the least. Because of the injustices meted out to too many African Americans, we are livid! It is a very sad phenomenon. However, given some of the sentiments I have come across, I carefully penned these thoughts:
‘All lives matter’ is correct in its pure context. The white supremacist’s usage of it, on the other hand, is plain mockery! ‘Black lives matter’ is also correct in its pure context. The motivation behind expressions matters.
‘All lives matter’ is a very balanced statement in this racial conflict in which we’ve found ourselves. For we would not want to intimate in the least that it’s one race against another. No! Rather, it is good people, regardless of race, colour, or creed, against bad people, no matter who they are.
If blacks despise whites, wholesale, just because some whites have done us wrong, then we become bigots ourselves. We cannot fry everyone in the same fat! We must judge each according to his actions. Thus, we run the risk of creating wide-scale segregation and anarchy if we make it a wholesale blacks against wholesale whites battle, as opposed to embracing those who seek our common good (black or white), and resisting those who fight against it (black or white).
There are good and bad people on both sides. Period. So, our conflict is not with a colour, or shade, but with a type: a type that believes that because you are of a different colour you must be seen and treated as lesser human beings. We defy this mentality.
As the old proverb says: “A no every fish a sea a shark!” (Not every fish in the sea is a shark.)
PASTOR JERMAINE JOHNSON