Time and time again since the Black Lives Matter movement started gaining traction, I've seen people take up metaphorical arms on the internet. As for me, I've been fighting with family on Facebook since I started vocalizing my support of the movement. I've seen others do the same - calling out friends and family members in righteous anger.
We are all emotionally charged about this. We all feel like we are definitely in the right. But I keep seeing the conversation go way off track. Too many times, politics are brought into it. I'm thinking of a specific recent post of mine.
I shared a short comic strip that illustrated the dichotomy of those who demanded justice for Cannon Blake Hinnants, a five-year-old boy who was shot in his front yard a few weeks ago, killing the innocent child. The kid's death is indeed a terrible tragedy, but the local police department treated it as such. They utilized all of their resources (their own words) to locate and arrest the main suspect, within 24 hours even, but nonetheless, conservative Americans launched a campaign for justice using Cannon Blake as its face, boldly saying that the media was intentionally not covering his death while unnecessarily over-covering the death of George Floyd.
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| Disclaimer: I looked for the original of this comic posted by poorlydrawnlines.com, but could not find it. It may be that someone edited the original comic with the above text. |
The comic strip illustrates a man demanding justice for the child's murder, another man holding up a file and stating that justice had already been found, to which the first man set fire and said, "I don't want justice. I want black people to shut up about being murdered by police."
This, of course, spurred lots of heated conversation in the comment section. I understand that everyone is worked up right now. We all feel the need to defend our opinions to the death because it could mean life or death for some of us - or at the very least, an undecided future (ahem, scary!). But I was unpleasantly unsurprised to see the comments turn political. I didn't think Trump or Biden or any politician had anything to do with this. But there they were, several memes slandering Joe Biden stacked on top of each other, and plenty of other off-topic stuff besides.
I hate this stuff. It's not about democratic or republican views. At all! It's not about who you vote for, but what your morals are, how the situations differed from each other, how they are the same, what the community's involvement in each was. Are there other occurrences of this type of behavior? Are there ways we could make a difference so we have less of it in the future? How were the parties involved treated? Does that line up with our morals? What could we do about it?
If we had these conversations instead, we would probably find that we have a lot more in common. Mainly the common goal: to stop unnecessary killing of innocent lives. I think we are all on board there. But it's hard to stop being mad. Sometimes we'd rather die on that hill.
I have been guilty of letting my emotions get the better of me, but I'm going to try harder to keep the conversations geared toward productive conversation. Hopefully, those family members who are disappointed in me and think that I must be ill informed or naive will stick around and participate in the conversation, too.
But to make a difference at all, I may need some help. Who else is willing to stay on topic with me?
If that's you, consider sharing this post or adding a comment below.
Till next time,
Xx Alison
