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Racial Reconciliation: Black Lives Matter, too

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the phrase Black Lives Matter? All Lives Matter?  Do you take offense?  Why?  What do you think it is saying?  Well, here is the truth: Black Lives matter like everyone else’s.  We are all made in the image of God.  We are all human beings created by God. So why does the mention of race make people defensive?  That question is thoroughly answered in Robin D’Angelo’s book, White Fragility.  I want to spend this article, however, sharing a story from history that illustrates how Black lives were treated like trash as the myth of inferiority prevailed in the minds of white people. In the book Blood at the Root, A Racial Cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips, is the recounting of what happened in Forsyth County, Georgia in the early nineteen hundreds. Unfortunately, incidents like this were all too common.

Forsyth County was home to a large Black population who dwelt quietly with their white neighbors until the day came when three Black men were accused of raping and murdering a white woman. Patrick Philillps writes: “When Black residents…woke to the sound of a rock smashing through a window or a jangle of bridles outside their door, the order to leave was usually delivered by men whose voices they had heard many times before…white neighbors they had lived and worked with for years”. (pg 69) They were driven out of their homes with the clothes on their back, never to return. Their churches were burned to the ground. Their lives were erased from the land, as if they were never there. Today that county is 95% white, having been all white for most of the 20th century. It was a modern day racial cleansing. 

Those lives mattered to God. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son” is the truth that all of man’s intellect and wisdom cannot overcome.  Do we really believe that all lives matter?  If we do, then Black Lives, indigenous lives, etc., MATTER.  This is what being pro-life is all about: caring for every human being by shaping laws and policies that unlock opportunities to live where we want, work where we want, and get the education we want and deserve.

So, now what is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the phrase:  Black Lives Matter?

 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28

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