There are a few things about this day, and they have to do with that championed phrase “All lives matter.” The people who say this are typically white. Mostly male, but not always. They are normally heterosexual people. Most of the time, they say they belong to a Christian church, but not always. So when they say “All lives matter,” they most likely have never known the feeling of being called a racial, or sexist, or hate-based slur. Like n***er. Or c*nt. Or fag.
Until you’ve experienced that kind of personal hatred waged against you, until you’ve known what it means to have people think your life does NOT matter because of your color, or your sexual preference, or religion — then you probably would feel quite comfortable proclaiming “all lives matter.” And surely, every single human life matters. They do. But many people do not know what it feels like on the other side of that.
On this date, August 20, the first enslaved African people came to the shores of this country, in 1619. They arrived in the Virginia Colony known as Jamestown — at Point Comfort of all places. Most of their names have been lost to history, as well as the exact number who were brought here. They were originally kidnapped by Portuguese forces. They were from the native Kongo and Ndongo kingdoms in Africa.
They stepped onto these shores as slaves. It would begin an era, a slave trade that would continue into the mid-1800s. The trade uprooted roughly 12 million Africans. Yes. Twelve million. These slaves were “deposited” in Brazil (5 million) and the Caribbean (3 million). In comparison, the number of Africans brought to mainland North America was relatively small — about 400,000. These slaves, and the generations of their children that followed, bore the labor that provided crucial growth to the economies of the British colonies and, later, the United States. These numbers continue to dismay me, every time I am reminded.
Hundreds of years of slavery. We continue to see the detrimental effects today, whether we like to admit it or not.
Switching gears, from the shores of Virginia, to the baseball diamonds of the midwest, the Cincinnati Reds had a game last evening against the Kansas City Royals. During the game, long-time announce, Thom Brennaman, blurted into his microphone, “the fag capitals of the world.” He didn’t know his mic was hot.
As a woman who was born homosexual — and I was — it saddens me to still hear this type of language anywhere, let alone on a national platform, from a professional announcer, in a sport I love, and a team I admire.
And of course, if this is going on there, one can be assured that this is a common language among so many people in the United States who still believe that homosexuals are somehow “evil” or “misguided” or “sinful” or “lesser-than-them.” Heart-breaking and deeply wounding. Sometimes this even comes from our own family members. I don’t have words for that.
We come into this world, born free of hatred. Our hearts, our souls, were made to know love, tolerance, acceptance. As babies, we were only seeking comfort and love. We only started crying when a need wasn’t being met.
I don’t know where this world is going.
But I know where I am trying to go.
We make mistakes, but we can hope to try harder.
We may take steps backward, but then we move forward.
Bad days will come, good days will too.
The tides will always rise and fall.
However far away it gets, we have to move back to the center.
Where our true self is. Where it began, in a place of love.
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“Where there is hatred, let me bring love.”
― St. Francis of Assisi
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“And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
― Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
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“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”
― Pablo Neruda
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