No one is excluded from looking within. Truly a white ally. Thank you. Repost from @brianmcclinticms using @RepostRegramApp – Let’s try this again. After a recent #blackouttuesday post on my business account, I deleted and blocked several people who commented ‘ALL LIVES MATTER’. I wish I had responded instead. So let this be a pre-response to whatever comes next. ‘All Lives Matter’ sounds great in theory. In context, however, it is damaging at best, and in practice, what could be more untrue? In retaliation to Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter is an agent of intolerance that seeks to undermine the very words it declares. From the moment we stepped foot on Jamestown in 1619, with slaves in tow, to the moment Derek Chauvin laid a knee on George Floyd’s neck in 2020, 401 years of perpetual ‘stepping on’ a given people, ALL lives have NOT mattered. All lives have not mattered, because through our systemic conduct, past and present, we have not demonstrated that black lives do. If restoring harmony and equitability to a society is paramount to all lives, then the first thing White America needs to do is acknowledge that BLACK LIVES MATTER. In doing so, you are not decrying your own life, but rather sewing a seed of empathy and advocacy for those who deserve to be seen and heard. In doing so, you let a vital movement do what George Floyd could not…breathe. . The only fault of the Civil Rights Movement is that every chronicle has the period ending in 1968. There are no time stamps on civil rights. The Civil Rights Movement is now. And acknowledging today that Black Lives Matter is merely the preface to a better narrative, so let’s at least get that right. From there, we get to work. Chapter 1 looks like self-examination. If I’ve always treated black people kindly, I am not excluded. If I have black friends, I am not excluded. If I have a black significant other, I am not excluded. If I feel more comfortable around black people than other ethnicities, I am not excluded. If I am another person of color, who has been oppressed, I am not excluded. No one is excluded from looking within. Least of all me. #blacklivesmatter #blm