Black lives DO matter, right?

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have always had a passion for improving relations between people of different ethnic backgrounds. Among my earliest memories take me to a time when I asked my mama where my daddy was. I was a toddler and my father was a pastor. I naturally wondered why he was gone so much. Mama told me he was out “calling” on families. One time she added that Daddy was calling on people who had dark brown skin. That was the first time I knew this group of people even existed, but I also knew that they were important or Daddy wouldn’t be going to visit them. I remember looking out the car windows for dark skinned people hoping to see one when we went for a ride.

My family moved to a small all-white town where my father began a new career as a teacher. Yes, even in Indiana  smaller communities were pretty much segregated. The people who had a hand in making my town all white died years before I arrived on the scene. That little all-white town had both rich people and poor people in it.

My first encounter with a black person came when my family went to the Indiana State Fair, and we all bought large red buttons with our names on them. A black girl called out “Hi Janice!” to me, and “Hi Joan” to my sister. We said “Hi” back and giggled and that was that. Guess we were all shy. I also remember seeing black children come to our little all-white town in northern Indiana for Little League baseball games. I wished I could get to know them, but again I was too shy to say anything.

I graduated from HS in that small town and got a Civil Service job at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, and for the first time in my life had the opportunity to know black people by name and work for and under them. I enjoyed the experience, though my time there was only for a few months, as my family moved from that small Indiana town to Murfreesboro, Tennessee where my father joined the faculty at MTSU, giving me and my siblings the opportunity to attend college while living at home.

As a college student in the 60s while Martin Luther King was leading his marches and while the Watts Riots were taking place in Los Angeles, I was instrumental in starting up a new campus organization called CUBE. The letters stood for Creating Understanding By Effort, and we met on a regular basis bringing black and white students together to discuss our differences and hope to come together in love. In my senior year I had a black roommate at my request, and we are still close today.

After graduation from MTSU, I became a teacher in South Carolina in 1970, the first year integration of the schools was made mandatory. I hadn’t studied to teach, but landed my first job in October on the telephone with the support of three references. One of them was a camp director from a summer camp I had worked in for two summers for ghetto children out of Nashville, mostly black. I have over 20 years experience in the SC public school system as a teacher and librarian with populations that were mostly black.

I give all this background hoping you will understand my love for the black community as I share what I want to say next. Many of my closest friends have been black beginning at the time I had the opportunity to get to know them.

I understand the need to encourage downtrodden children with a poor self image. They grow up to become adults and carry a lot of baggage with them. This is true in more than one ethnic group, and to be honest I have to include myself among them. My own lack of self-esteem planted me in a failed marriage and with feelings of incompetence in the workplace.

I also understand the frustration of black girls whose beauty wasn’t recognized on magazine covers. I understand the insecurity of growing up in poverty and wishing for the nice things other children had. More black children grew up in poverty than did white children, but both were there. I witnessed the gap in academic performance between black and white children, and recognized that the problem was deeper than intellectual ability – it had everything to do with lack of opportunity when blacks had been denied the opportunity to get an education, yet had to teach themselves once the opportunity was granted in segregated schools.

In that day and time, white privilege was very real. We were better prepared academically to get the better jobs, and on average had a head start by who we knew. But changes were already taking place to correct some of these problems. Laws went into effect enforcing integration on many levels, not only in the school system, but in hiring as well. Doors were opening. In many situations, black/white ratios were enforced making it a requirement to hire blacks over whites giving blacks a preferred status.

But there are limits to what laws can change and do. Laws can deal with numbers and opportunity, but they can’t change hearts. Laws can’t put smiles on peoples faces or require a sense of good-will. Laws can’t dictate what attitudes are taught in homes – in homes of people of all skin colors and shades.

Now, what can be said about Black Lives Matter? I can say from the bottom of my heart that black lives DO matter. I must also add that ALL lives matter, and downtrodden people are found in every skin shade from the palest tones to the darkest.

Every ethnic group could benefit from building one another’s self-esteem, especially the most impoverished among them. And as I have already said earlier, the black community may well still have some of the most difficult hurdles to overcome.

But the BLM movement has been hijacked away from the hands of compassionate people who care about their children. It has been stolen by people willing to discredit any positive image blacks have built up since the days of Martin Luther King, by glorifying black people rioting and destroying businesses and communities. BLM has been hijacked by the LGBT+ agenda as well as the communist and socialist agendas. These are separate issues altogether from caring about the lives of black children and adults.

I pray that my black friends who have been endorsing the BLM movement will take a closer look to see what it really stands for. Ask the tough questions. How is your movement going to help my children? Really??? Are they supporting black colleges? Are they offering scholarships to black children? What are they giving? Or are they only making a lot of noise?

Then let’s ask the better questions. How can we help our children to thrive in a community that includes people of all ethnic backgrounds. How can we ourselves learn to love people who are different from us instead to building walls that encourage hate and violence. Do we really want our children to grow up in a violent world? Or do we prefer a peace that is earned and deserved? It will take effort on the part of every ethnic group to make this happen.

Author: Janice D. Green

Janice D. Green retired as an elementary librarian to write children's books. She is author and publisher of Jonah, the Fearful Prophet, The Creation and Baby Jesus . . . Messiah!, Bible storybooks for children. Her passion is to write Bible stories that include as much content as possible while keeping the language kid friendly. Her most recent books include extra activities for children including downloadable coloring pages and puzzles - excellent for homeschooling parents and Christian education for children. View all posts by Janice D. Green