Do All Lives Matter? by Wayne Gordon

Author:Wayne Gordon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: United States—Race relations;Race relations—Religious aspects—Christianity;Racism—United States;Racism—Religious aspects—Christianity;Reconciliation—Religious aspects—Christianity;Black lives matter movement;REL012110;SOC031000;REL012000
ISBN: 9781493410750
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2016-12-16T05:00:00+00:00

It’s not just everyday conversations and routine interactions that reveal the presence of invisible people. In early July 2016, the nation experienced one of its most tense and wrenching times as on consecutive days African American men were shot and killed by police, first in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and then just outside St. Paul, Minnesota. A few days later, five Dallas police officers were shot and killed by a black man in apparent retaliation.

But even as the nation was mourning, my heart turned to my own community. In the same period of just a few days that spanned the killings of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and the five Dallas police officers, 114 people were shot in Chicago. Eleven of them died. The nation’s attention was focused on the five Dallas police officers who’d been killed and their families. They got lots of publicity, even a special address from the president, something that was right and good. Yet no one seemed to care about those 114 people—especially the eleven who lost their lives—in Chicago. Where was the mourning for them? In fact, most of these incidents didn’t even make the local news. This ought to make us wonder how much the lives of people on the South and West Sides of Chicago, especially Americans of African descent, truly matter.

One of my first lessons regarding invisible people still haunts me today. It came in the 1970s during my first year as a teacher at Farragut High School on the West Side. An African American teen in my class had become one of my prize students. We knew him by his nickname, “Top Cat.” He did his homework faithfully, came to class every day, earned straight As, was always front and center, and was willing and able to answer almost any question. But then one day, Top Cat didn’t show up to class. I waited for a few minutes before finally asking, “Does anyone know anything about Top Cat?”

A few students responded, “Coach, you didn’t hear?”

To which I replied, “Hear what?”

They proceeded to tell me that there’d been a holdup at the gas station where Top Cat worked at night, and that he had been shot dead.

I remember that day like it was yesterday. I especially remember trying to go to Top Cat’s funeral, but I couldn’t even find out where it was. No newspaper, no TV or radio newscast, nothing anywhere about the death of Top Cat. He was one of those nameless and faceless people about whom nobody seems to care and whose life doesn’t seem to matter.

Invisible.

The star of our class had simply gone out.

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