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三士渡Stoooges|三士渡英文写作大赛圆满结束，恭喜所有获奖同学！( 二 )


No one wants to believe they are responsible for racism, prejudice, injustice. This means that a blanket statement like “racism is embedded in America” prompts defensiveness from whites: “I’m not racist. I haven’t treated anyone unfairly.” And in a conscious sense, this may be true. However, study after study have shown that blacks are treated unfairly at all levels of our society. Even a cursory glance at statistics show that blacks make far less money, have far more health problems, are more likely to be passed over for promotion, are less likely to be college educated. For too long, white politicians excused these facts by saying that the problem was with blacks themselves, that they were unmotivated to work or not smart enough to be educated. Leaving aside the deeply ingrained racism implicit in such viewpoints, or the overt racist tactics that were for years used to make sure blacks couldn’t achieve, more recent studies of the justice system have demonstrated conclusively that such arguments are patently wrong. When a black man is accused of the same crime as a white man, he will suffer much more severe consequences. There are no ways to refute the conclusion: black people are treated unjustly by our law enforcement and courts. There may be several possible explanations for the fact, but the fact itself is irrefutable.
Taken to its extreme, this fact can be viewed as a devaluing of black lives. That is, the very worst outcomes of the law enforcement or justice systems are death. When law enforcement chase a suspect on the street, for example, these same statistics say they are more likely to kill that suspect if he is black than if he is white. This means, in simplest terms, that black lives are not treated with the same respect, as carefully, as white lives. This fact then returns us to the slogan itself: “Black lives matter.” That phrase doesn’t say other lives don’t matter. It doesn’t say white lives matter less than black lives. It says only “black lives matter.” In this sense, it serves as a reminder for those who seem to have forgotten the fact. It recognizes that at present black lives aren’t being treated as though they matter, and arguing that they should.
We’ve all heard the phrase, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” In essence, that saying suggests that all other things being equal, we tend to pay attention to the biggest problem of the moment. If you have four children and three of them seem to be doing well but one has chicken pox, naturally you’re more likely to give that child the bulk of your attention. If you’re at the park with several people and one catches fire, the most logical course of action would be to try and help the one on fire. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about the other people, or that you wouldn’t try to help them if they were on fire. But as it happens, only one is on fire, and that’s the one who needs your help the most.
The situation we face is tricky. We don’t have a handful of people in front of us: we have enormous populations of people in front of us. And we may not feel like we had anything to do with setting the person on fire, and we may not even be in the best position to help. But to fail to recognize that one of our number needs help more than the others is simply callous and selfish. All lives matter, but when all the other ones are being taken care of, then it is our responsibility to make sure black lives matter as well.


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