JanJans Blog

I am a pacifist. Always have been, always will be. I will never condone violence against my fellow human beings.

Then again, I am a white, heterosexual male living in Europe and I speak from what nowadays they call "a place of privilege". I am literally the guy that is standing on top of the proverbial shoulders of giants. I will never know the struggles that many people have to go through in their lives. But I always try to keep my eyes open as well as my mind. I don't always succeed, I am only human. But I have always had a strong sense of justice, and it is that sense that tells me that not all is right in the world, be it on the streets of America or just around the corner from where I live.

I see #blacklivesmatter trending on social media and I see people "taking a knee", and at first all of this seemed a bit strange to me, a bit too much drama. It has been somewhat out of context for me. America is far away and I only know few people over there, and even less of them are people of colour. You can't understand what you don't know. But you can try and learn. And I learned that racial discrimination did not end in the '60s. When they shot MLK, racism didn't go away as if by magic. It buried deep into a society that in some ways is as alien to me as the moon. It took root. And now and again it comes back.

I remember when back in the '90s LA was on fire and it reminds of what is going on right now. When you have beaten an arbitrary group of your population into submission for as long as this, for hundreds of years, of course they are not going to simply ask for justice peacefully. They will come for us privileged ones with rage and fire, and they will ask questions like: "Has your pacifist mindset been complicit in our oppression? Have you been living a good, comfortable life while my brothers have been choked to death by agents of a society you and your forefathers created?"

America is a long way away. I don't know the first thing about that country and its politics, but every time I see that president on TV I wonder: "Why is that man in such a powerful position?" And then I remember: There are people like him in my own country as well. There are those who raise their right hand in salute. Those are the ones that are easily spotted. There are those that quietly but persistently undermine our own values of equality, freedom and what is left of our democracy. Those are the sneaky ones you have to be aware of every minute of your waking life. And then there are those who take a look at America now and say: "Oh that poor black man, it's a shame, such injustice", and then turn a blind eye as human beings are drowning in the Mediterranean or being used as bargaining chips at some border, some random line in the dirt, right here on European soil, or they call the gay couple who dares to hold hands in public bad names and spit in their faces, or they believe that all those nasty politicians are only in it for their own personal gain and can't be trusted, so they vote for some extremist, who promises them simpler times with easy to follow rules.

Those people are you and me! Americans are not more or less racist or discriminatory than we are. We are just different. And it is high time that we break out the protest signs that read: "Of course black lives matter!" To take a stand. To prevent what happened 80 years ago from happening again. We do not need to protect minorities, we need to change our way of thinking so that minorities don't need protecting any more.