At a recent Black Lives Matter vigil at the Route 101 and Route 202 intersection, I stood with my friend Paul. A white man stopped his car, rolled down a window and started comments to Paul. The man said to “not stand for Black Lives Matter as all lives matter. You need to stand for white lives like you are.”
Paul and I were thunderstruck with the man’s remarks. With a minus-30 windchill factor, those of us at the vigil were covering our skin for frostbite protection. Only Paul’s eyes were visible, while his black skin was disguised under his attire. We chuckled over the man assuming those in vigil were all white people.
How easy to believe those standing at our weekly vigil are all white people while one does not understand why us white people stand in sun, rain, snow, cold or heat for what we believe needs to be seen and addressed, when we do have Black people who are part of our group. Typically, we do have one or two, sometimes more, Black people, with them spread about the area.
On a brutally cold day we got our chuckles from someone who thought he was seeing what he believed his eyes told him. Not at a busy intersection but in a different space, it would be good to have conversations with this man and others like him so he and they hear from us white folks and our Black friends of why we do what we do.
Kath Allen
Peterborough