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In a recent exchange with S Baldwin, here on the blog, they pointed out that in addition to Black men’s lives, and that of Black male youth, there are other lives that don’t matter as far as mainstream media outlets are concerned: those of Black women and Black girls.

What is especially disturbing and outrageous is that Black women’s lives get subsumed in the lives of others who are oppressed and systematically killed. “Black women” as “Black people” are sexistly misunderstood to be “Black men”. And “Black people” is intentionally used only to mean Black men.

All the Women are White, all the Blacks are Men… comes to mind.

White trans organizations too often subsume Black trans lives into “Trans lives” that comes to mean “White Trans lives.” I’ve seen the gender identities of trans people be e-raced when the lives are Black. “We” are being killed is spoken from a white perspective, even when most trans people killed are not white and are, in fact, Black.

I have had the great honor to hear Alicia Garza speak, and she is, to me–a white male, the meaning of “a great leader”–the kind of leader the white or male supremacist mainstream, in media or out of it, will unlikely acknowledge as such. She will also not likely acknowledge herself as such–as ‘the’ leader, not out of false modesty, but because she knows political movements are not the product of a single spokesperson. Alicia also speaks inclusively, which is in itself rare among white progressives or male radicals. Keeping with that tradition is not conducive to the Great White Male Leader narrative. Alicia speaks to the leadership and purpose of Black Lives Matter, here:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29813-building-movements-without-shedding-differences-alicia-garza

An excerpt:

It’s really hard for people to wrap their heads around a movement that is full of leaders. That’s how our homes work; that’s how our communities work; that’s how our workplaces work, whether or not we want to talk about it. We’re just trying to reflect our own realities. We’re trying to create more pathways for more people to participate and engage. If we want a full democracy in this country, we can’t just have people following one person. Everyone has to feel like they have a stake in shaping the kind of world that we live in. Otherwise, we get into a situation like the one that we’re living in now, where nobody’s happy with the leadership that we’re getting.  – Alicia Garza

Here are some links detailing the atrocities. There are many and there are not enough, but few of them come from the white male mainstream.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2015/07/at_least_5_black_women_have_died_in_police_custody_in_july_wtf.html

http://www.blackgirldangerous.org/2014/12/whose-lives-matter-trans-women-color-police-violence/

http://www.womankind.org.uk/2015/05/sayhername-police-brutality-against-black-women-in-the-us/