Black Lives Matter

If Whiteness is a metaphor for power as James Baldwin put it, Blackness is a metaphor for being exploited, dominated, expropriated, abused and sometimes massacred by people of power for centuries. But It can also be a metaphor for standing up, struggling and fighting for justice, dignity and equality, with all the risks that such a struggle or fight might engender.
 
Those who are replacing “Black Lives matter” with “All Lives matter” might in some cases have good intentions. In most cases, however, they remind me of the ones who condemn violence in Occupied Palestine or in Syria putting Israeli soldiers and settlers on the same level with Palestinians who are dispossessed of their lands and homes, or Assadist forces on the same level with Syrians who are bombed, displaced and tortured. To put it differently, their argument is similar to responding to feminist slogans that deconstruct masculine domination, by evoking few incidents that targeted men and thus calling for removing any reference to masculinity or to patriarchy when talking about oppressing women.
 

“Black Lives matter” is a powerful slogan. It is first and foremost about the protection of Black people from police (and other) racist brutality, about solidarity with them (in the US and in our own countries); but it is also about protecting and supporting all those oppressed everywhere, if blackness is understood as a universal political metaphor…

Ziad Majed