Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Famous Black Lives Matter Too



A couple of weeks ago, the drummer from the band Rush, Neil Peart, died of cancer. This is very sad, and on social media everyone was saying how sad it was. Nobody posted anything like, “These other non-famous people died of cancer the same day, so if you’re a good person, you’ll share this to remember them,” and you would think a person was nuts if they did. Because of course it is also sad that other people you don’t know died of cancer, but you are mourning the person you do know (or at least know of, in the case of a celebrity). It feels like minimizing people’s grief and Neil Peart's life to bring up other deaths.

So then, why is it that when Kobe Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash this weekend, my social media feed was full of pictures of white people who had also died that day, saying if I was a good person I would share their photos to show they had died too? It was maybe a little bit understandable when it was the other people in the helicopter with him, but a cop who died the same day on duty? Come on! The people who post this probably figure you aren’t going to say, “What are you doing?” because all these deaths are tragic, but it seems just as wildly inappropriate as if they had been doing it regarding Neil Peart. I don’t know the people who died in the crash, or the cop, but I know of Kobe. I also noticed that nobody said, “Remember his daughter who died too!” Because she’s also black. It just seemed extremely noticeable that they were basically saying, “Instead of remembering some rich black guy, focus on the deaths that matter – white people!” It felt like they were minimizing Kobe’s death, and that to me is racism. This is exactly the kind of thing that makes people have to remind us all that black deaths matter as much as white ones.

Famous Hat

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