No Dallas, Black Lives contradiction

Some people on the internet seem to be confused. “In the aftermath of 14 people being tragically shot for no reason in Dallas,” they wonder, “how will Black Lives Matter be able to continue being upset about people getting tragically shot for no reason in other places? How will the Black Lives Matter movement square its criticism of police with this deadly shooting of five police officers?”

It doesn’t seem hard. Its agenda is “people don’t deserve to be shot for no reason” and that the category of “people who don’t deserve to be shot for no reason” explicitly includes black people.

There’s no contradiction here.

Other people are busy being eloquent with grief and rage, but I can at least make a simple analogy to help explain why this line of thinking is bad.

It’s like if you said, “I want ice cream machines not to malfunction and kill people,” and then everyone said, “So you hate ice cream machines?” No. You just want the ice cream machine to do its job, and not kill people.

You are not opposed to what it is supposed to be doing, just to what it is actually doing. You are all for it doing what it is supposed to do. What it is supposed to do is great.

When you say that something could be better, or that it is not living up to what it promised, you are not saying you hate it. If, for instance, President Obama points out that we have a problem with racially motivated fear and violence, he is not inciting violence and saying that he hates America. He is doing the exact opposite of that.

If any time someone said to me, “I think you could be doing a better job,” I responded, “Why do you hate me?” my mother and I would have no relationship at all.

But to many people, it can sound like that. “There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves,” as James Baldwin wrote.

A great deal of our self-esteem is dependent upon not fully seeing ourselves. But the first step, as they say, is admitting you have a problem.

You don’t have to pretend that America was better than it was to insist that it can be better than it is. To point out that America has a problem with race or that some police forces are not living up to the ideals we set for them is not to say you hate America or hate the police. You're saying that you really like America as a concept, that the ideas that animate this country – free speech, free assembly, being created equal – are wonderful ideas and worthy of belief. You’re saying that we need to stop America from malfunctioning, so we can give it to our kids. Even if the malfunction has been there as long as we have, you’re saying there’s hope.

There is no contradiction in that, either.

This story was originally published July 12, 2016 at 12:01 AM with the headline "No Dallas, Black Lives contradiction."