I LOVE wearing it! If I could wear it every day I would. It makes a statement on how I feel about the state of race relations in this country. It should say to anyone who sees me that I care about the mistreatment and downright brutality being levied against our people---especially the young black males.
This brings me to an incident I had today at Harris Teeter. I was standing in line behind another older black woman. She saw my shirt and proceeded to comment about how she didn't understand what the movement was all about and why was it necessary to make a t-shirt to demonstrate. Being the soft-spoken person that I am, I told her it was no different than what young people did during the 60s and 70s movement and I wanted young people to to know I stand in solidarity with them.
You know, I am always amazed at how older people tend to forget they were young once and all of the things they did---right or wrong/good or bad---for the "cause." Once we turn a certain age we become holier than thou and act as if everything is okay the way it is. We turn a blind eye to the things we see and read and what we hear falls on deaf ears.
Police brutality against blacks didn't just start in the new millennium. The only difference is there was no social media back then---no camera to record what was really going on. And, unlike, many of today's youth, a lot of people, back in the day, stayed silent in fear of what might happen to them. Perhaps the woman in Harris Teeter feels like her fight is over and she chooses to remain silent, but as for me I'm going to keep wearing my Black Lives Matter T-shirt because I know the struggle is very real and it continues.
As Desmond Tutu once said, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
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