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| Photograph by Kristin Johnson |
After the recent fatal shootings of Alton Sterling and Philandro Castile, Sunny Pai wrote this incredible piece about why the #BlackLivesMatter movement is so essential. We are grateful to Sunny for all of his work, his friendship, and for letting us share his thoughts below.
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How to Tell if Your Life Matters
• Schools that serve primarily those of your race are clean, well-resourced, and well-supported. Students in those schools generally understand they will go to college unless they choose not to and it will probably be a bit embarrassing if they don't. Your history is taught in these schools to everyone... and not just the parts of history where your people were on the losing side.
• In the very unlikely event that you are mistakenly shot by police, medical aid will be rendered immediately to try and save your life.
• If you are accused of committing a crime, the photo of you in the media will be a flattering one. Unless you are a teacher who slept with a student – that situation seems to universally warrant an ugly mug shot.
• You are not regularly detained by police because you "fit a description," cause after all, you have places to get to and things to do, and that, along with your life, is respected.
• People (outsiders) do not blatantly profit off your culture by appropriating it. Your most successful musicians are not controlled by bosses of a different culture that encourage you to make music that glorifies violence towards and objectification of your own people.
• College students and kids in gap years don't volunteer to "help you out," even though they are barely in a position to help themselves.
• Has a city ever been entirely shut down to hunt down the killers of your people? Your life matters. Same for a regional manhunt (see Christopher Dorner and Eric Frein).
• Was someone who looked like you murdered? If their killer was found, were they successfully prosecuted to the full extent of the law? Your life matters.
• Have you committed an awful crime and been let off with a lenient sentence? Or a minor crime and been let off with a slap on the wrist? So you could live your life? Your life matters. On the flip side, did you commit the same crime but were imprisoned for quite a while? Your life doesn't matter.
• If health statistics were disaggregated by your demographic, are your numbers lower consistently? Life expectancy? Blood pressure? If so, your life may not matter.
• Have an unexpected number of your people been dying? Did Facebook offer to change people's profile pic? Hey, your life matters.
• Did your founding fathers once value you at 60% of other people? Was this historical event studied in school primarily as a brilliant piece of legislation that broke a deadlock and celebrated Roger Sherman from Connecticut who was a co-author for his brilliance in breaking that deadlock? Instead of teaching generations of kids that somehow valuing humans at 3/5 their worth is a scourge on our country that we need to understand how it has ramifications today?
• Were your people not only killed, but at one time, almost 4,000 lynched in a 75 year period? And not just hung but mutilated? And is this history sort of erased? Do we have a national museum on this? Is it part of our national history curriculum? Does this "mob mentality" no longer exist? Or are people possibly still scared for their lives in normal situations as a vestige of this history? Maybe?
I am so tired of people not understanding why there is a hashtag. And why it is so absurd and heartbreaking why one is needed. And then it doubles the insult when that necessity is questioned.
