When a Black Lives Matter poster was defaced with Black being replaced by white, it could have been further defaced by removing the “v” and thus being rendered White Lies Matter.
It was certainly an endless train of lies that fueled the Trump administration, none of them more alarming than his claim that the election he loss was fixed and fraudulent.
That white lie was by no means a small one; it was a key reason thousands of angry citizens, many of them belonging to militant right-wing racist hate groups, stormed the Capitol, threatening lawmakers and causing the deaths of five people.
Call it an insurrection, a coup attempt, or outright mob violence, it was an eruption that should be at the heart of the upcoming Trump impeachment trial.
There are widespread reports of Trump being unable to secure attorneys to represent him; they are socially and politically distancing themselves from him, much in the manner of a few early Trump associates who abandoned him like rats deserting a sinking ship.
We congratulate Biden for his exertion of executive orders, and hope that he keeps the pedal to the metal, lest we have to put his feet to the fire.
Unity, tolerance, compassion, and dignity are words as common for the Biden administration as lies, insults, epithets were to the Trump administration.
Yes, white lies matter when the end results are so deleterious, so destructive to the rule of law and the democratic process. Eddie Glaude Jr., in his book “Begin Again—James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons For Our Own,” does a remarkable job tracing the history and impact of lies at the nation’s core.
From the very inception of America, lies were critical in the structure and matrix of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence; they were in the sermons of racist preachers and in teachers’ textbooks. In practically every walk of life, Black Americans were met with a blizzard of lies about our humanity, shoring up the notion that many historians agreed was our “inherent ineptitude.”
Those white lies crippled our opportunities and relegated us to the precincts of the damned. They were all designed to keep us in that place of ignorance and self-hatred, and they took shape in the minds of the marauders on Jan. 6. No doubt about it, Black Lives Matter and so do white lies when they come like bullets nullifying the truth and limiting our hopes and dreams.