Black Lives Matter to Me
A Statement by Silvia Lucci
Throughout my youth in Argentina from the early 1960’s -1980’s, I lived on and off under dictatorship with several years of weak democracies that would end with the military taking over, the boots coming back every time. That was the only thing I knew. You couldn’t trust the police or the soldiers. You always had to keep a low profile, because people would disappear during the night and you would rarely see them again. Somehow your neighbor would go from being the kind person that gave you candy on Children’s Day to just being gone. This inexplicable disappearance (pseudo death) was haunting, because no one knew what happened, but the message of fear always came back into the neighborhood from the police, and that night you were reminded passionately by your parents to do nothing that could enrage a cop or a soldier and have attention come to our family. I didn’t know better, that was just the way it was through my first 20 years of life. The media, the education, the access to books and information were all controlled by the military government.
When I came to the USA over 32 years ago, it thrilled me to have arrived in the Land of the Free. But slowly, very subtlely I saw the stress, the struggle, the inequality, the discrimination, the racism that the African American community were subject every day. It shocked my moral compass; it seemed incomprehensible. From the beginning we did everything we could to fit in, it was never completely an excellent fit; us being Spanish and talking funny, but if I kept quiet, I could pass as a white American, as a neighbor pointedly let me know, supposedly as a great compliment. Many years later, after learning about each other, I created the most beautiful friendships of my life, and I still talk funny.
I took a class in American History in 1990 to understand where I was living, and I fell in love with the fathers of this country, their dream, the American experiment. As Jefferson said, "The flames kindled on the 4th of July 1776, have spread across too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume the engines and all who work them." I could cry every time I read this. The self-evident truth that "all men are created equal; endowed by their creator with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" still remains the powerful philosophical and moral foundation of the American republic itself.
If you are a religious person, you can’t choose one part of the bible or the Quran to guide your life, you can’t choose not to kill but then bear false witness or steal. These are moral, social guidelines that are based in your own beliefs, so you wouldn’t be a good christian if you don’t steal but kill. Similarly, If you are an American, you can’t choose one amendment and disregard the others, or the original constitution and deny the Bill of rights, that would not make you a Good American citizen.
Immigrants come to America in pursuit of the original American dream, or escaping a nightmare. Immigrants of color still receive an onslaught of discrimination and racism, but It is not the same institutonalized racism that African Americans lived for generations. We choose to come and work for our place in America. African Americans are part of the formation of this country right from the beginning. A crime happened all those years ago and there is no statute of limitations for it.
The founders were not perfect, but they were wise. I believe that America is fighting the ugliness of knowing that a crime was committed that was never fixed; and she is still fighting the unbearable shame of this original sin. The time has come for atonement; it is the only way to bring America’s experiment to fulfillment. The African American community is only asking for equality. As Reverend Al Sharpton pointedly said, “Just take your knee off our necks”. Equal opportunity is not equal when both groups start from such different beginnings. One group has driven and defined entrepreneurship and invention and the other has just begun to have access to equal education and opportunities in the last decades. We are all being witnesses to history right now, reading about it, watching the movies and learning in school about this continuous disparity and ugliness in America’s history that still shames us today.
It is time to stop; it is time for atonement. It’s time for criminal reform, for education reform, and for true equal opportunity. It is time to take the knee off the necks of people of color. There is one group that created the problem. It is unfair to expect the African American community to be able to fix something that white America has for 250+ years actively worked to keep them from accomplishing. There is an old saying, you break it, you own it. It is in every Good American’s conscience to fix it, now and forever, and to reclaim the American dream for ALL.
