This is just some brief food for thought.

June 6 was Breonna Taylor’s birthday. One of my friends shared a meme that said the country was thinking of her, and the friend commented the problem is, they aren’t thinking of her.

I’m fine with tackling one social justice issue at a time. But here’s the problem. Many social justice and human rights issues are tied together, known as intersectionality. While we have a 13th Amendment, we still don’t have the ERA. Women are 2nd class citizens. In so many demonstrable ways.

What, you ask, has any of this to do with Taylor? There are many Whites in this country who think Blacks are inferior. But this tends to be hierarchical in some ways. Black men are to be feared and hated. Black women are to be ignored.

And the reality is, even among Black Lives Matter supporters, the death of Black males gets far more attention. And I get why, this myth surrounding the males. But it is equally true we are perpetuating a form of misogyny to not make the death of a Breonna Taylor of equal importance to a George Floyd. Blacks cannot achieve real parity if we aren’t talking feminism at the same time. Blacks, all minorities, and women are all fighting for the same rights given to White males. We need to remember that and we need to acknowledge that in making these things hierarchical, the concept that comes out of it is that Black women’s lives matter just a little less than Black men and Black lives a little less than White lives. This puts Black women at the bottom of the totem pole. If it is true that we cannot say All Lives Matter until we openly acknowledge Black Lives Matter, so to we cannot say Black Lives Matter until we openly acknowledge Male Black Lives Matter and Female Black Lives Matter.