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Yeah, it's been a while. The good ol' U.S.A. sure hasn't done itself any favors in the not-being-a-total-disaster department in the interim, now has it?
I hardly know where to begin, but they always say, well, start where you are, eh? So, sitting here at my laptop trying to make sense of everything happening this week in these United [sic] States, I took a picture of my shirt. Here it is:
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| Well, I didn't say it was a flattering picture, did I? |
Whether you are familiar with the shirt or have zero context, you can think about what its message is. You can ask yourself, does it mean that girls don't play anywhere else but here, that for example they don't play over there? Does it mean that playing is the only activity they engage in here? That they never dance, talk, sing, laugh, fight, breathe, meditate, or whatever else when they are "here," wherever "here" is, literally or metaphorically? Does it mean that boys don't play here? Or there? Or anywhere? In a box or with a fox? For god's sake OBVIOUSLY NO IT DOESN'T MEAN THESE THINGS. So why the !@#$%* is everyone so damn confused about #BlackLivesMatter all the time?
I can't understand why people interpret #BlackLivesMatter the insipid ways that they choose to interpret it. I can't understand why they read "only" in a sentence where "only" doesn't exist, or why they add "and therefore police lives don't" when that is not only clearly not said and not meant but also utterly nonsensical (for example, what if there's a black police officer? Is he just caught in a paradox of both mattering and not mattering for eternity?), or why they DON'T see the implicit preamble of "Whereas a lot of people, institutions, and systemic societal forces have been disregarding black lives, up to and including the murder of innocent black people, we're going to mention here that..."
But hey, guess what? Girls play here. And black lives matter.
