Racism, Reaction and Rights

Racism, Reaction and Rights
Why is it politically correct to say “black lives matter”
And politically incorrect to say “all lives matter”?

Opinion from Rima E. Laibow, MD – Physician and Psychiatrist
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Note the absurdity of “political correctness” speech and thought control: Foundation Counsel Ralph tells me I can expect to be savagely attacked for not following the script as to whose lives matter. I am used to being attacked but I am also used to being proven right although it may take a while. I do not need slogans to tell me whose lives matter. My human being ‘s heart tells me whose lives matter. My oath as a doctor tells me whose lives matter. Hashtags do not.
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I am deeply disappointed in our Nation, in us, in our lack of love and in our lack of sense. As a Psychiatrist I find myself trying to understand the mental states of those acting out across the country.
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I fought as hard for Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation as I fought to end the wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. I was on the streets demonstrating, getting gassed and being vilified for what turned out, after all, to be as right , as we knew it was.
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We came to an understanding that human rights belonged to all of us BECAUSE we were human, NOT because we were black or white or Latino/a/ex, native born or from a village in mountains my neighbors and I had never heard of.
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Like any social justice person, I know that information leads to knowledge and knowledge is power. I sang and wrote the songs, I held the signs, I did the interviews, I created, folded, licked the stamps of, sealed and mailed so many, many leaflets that our local post office was literally upgraded to the next level!

I traveled to the protests and helped to organize us while we were there.
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After I started medical school in 1966 and well beyond, when I attended a protest or other social justice event, I wore a white motorcycle helmet with a Red Cross painted on it to protect my brain from the batons while I provided medical cadre services for the injured.
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But my colleagues, friends and I did not fight so that decades later our society could continue to be riddled by both hatred and unconscious (well-meaning? intentionally ignorant?) systemic racism.
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Let me be clear: in this country, in any sane and civilized country, the color of my skin and the origin of my family is NOT the business of society. My talents, limitations, needs and rights ARE the business of society.
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I want to weep and rage every time I see anyone in a supposedly advanced nation refer to police as black cops, white cops, Latino cops, female cops when the issue is cop-ism, not skin tone or gender-based muscle-mass differential.
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I want to weep and rage every time I see anyone in a supposedly advanced nation ‘qualify’ a vice presidential candidate because of gender or race or ethnicity when the discussion must be about political savey and track record, corruption quotient, diligence and intelligence, not chromosomes or melanin dermal density.
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I am a white Jewish woman who had a hell of a time getting into medical school because of my gender and ethnic background. That was unjustified. I had a hell of a time graduating because I was so outspoken in my political beliefs, and that was unjustified too, but at least it wasn’t racism or sexism, it was just plain vanilla political stupidity and Neanderthal-ism.
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I was volunteering at a black community church to set up a preventative medicine program at the request of the community. But the deans of my school were concerned would reduce the “tertiary disease states teaching material” that their house staff, they believed, came from around the world to learn on. Now that is, quite literally, system racism to die from.
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Upon being informed that I must stop my efforts because I was damaging the educational value of coming to the Henry Ford Hospital System as a member of the House Staff for this reason, I asked the Dean who told me that (who was, like me, White and Jewish) if he had graduated from Medical School at Auschwitz University.
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That seems to be when they decided to eject me from their Medical School for political reasons. I transferred to another one to complete my Medical degree. But just.  That, however, is a different , but, I must admit, similar, story.
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The point is not my medical career.  The point is that we have fought and thought that we won so many of the great and important battles. Have we, really? Apparently not.
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Have we lost those great and important battles after we apparently won them by sliding back into the dung and mire of qualifying people by irrelevancies like race and gender when the issues are so much more basic and profound and need to be addressed head on for what they are: greed, corruption, hearts of hate, totalitarian agendas and systemic callousness?
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I am human.  So are you.  I do not give a rat’s ass what color your skin or gender you wear. My blood and yours are the same.  My heart and yours are the same.  Our experiences are different, just as our parents are different. But either we are one family or we have no claim on the heart of humanity and the fierce majesty of which it is so gloriously capable: love.
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Any boy, girl, woman or man slaughtered by cruelty and inhuman behavior is my tragedy. Any boy, girl, woman or man who slaughters others by cruelty and inhuman behavior is my problem.
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I must mourn the first and prevent its repetition. I must recognize the second and prevent its repetition. Twitter Hashtags, ‘vicious dogs and ominous weapons’ turned on us BY us will not, will never, stop either the tragedy or the reason for the tragedy.
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There are solutions and they are in our policies, our economics, our education and our hearts. Anything, anything at all, no matter how familiar and comforting, that supports stigmatizing people for their appearance or anatomy or for whom they love or how they love (pedophilia excepted since children are not able to give free informed consent as adults who are not being intimidated by status and power inequality can) must be closely examined and either repaired or, if that is not possible, jettisoned as the debris of a long legacy of hurt and hate.  Nothing that supports such hatred has a place in our hearts and in our lives. Nothing..
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Here is how I see it, breath it, live it, love it: LIVES matter. All of them. I understand the protests. I understand the rage. I understand that agents provocateurs are doing the work of our would-be masters by creating destruction and I also understand that people overcome with rage are also capable of doing that without any outside help. But they are, in fact, getting plenty of outside help.
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I have lived through a number of horrific urban riots including Detroit, the Pentagon Riot and the Justice Department Riot in Washington DC. I have lived through storm trooper tactics and storm troopers “dominating the streets” so the would-be rulers would not ‘look like jerks’. They ARE jerks when they believe that they can beat us into willing and durable submission.
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This is a repeated and tragic history. Need I remind you of Ferguson just a few years ago? Need I remind you of Watts a few more years ago?
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The broken response of a broken system serves the breakers, it does not serve the decent.

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WE are the decent. WE are the ones who must look at capacity and behavior and culpability like X-ray machines. We must see the heart and the head and the bones and sinews of the act and the structures that support the act. An X-ray machine cannot tell you the race of the person viewed so deeply.
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We MUST stop referring to people by their race, by their gender, by their love-affiliation when it is irrelevant, respect all of those factors deeply where it is relevant and we MUST preach and teach and enforce decent behavior and speech.
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On the other hand, we must not allow ourselves to be herded into thought corrals. The United Nations recently came up with an absurd list of gender based words that we “should” no longer use in the castrated world of gender free living. No ‘spouse’, no ‘brother’, no ‘sister’, no ‘wife’ no ‘husband’, just balsamic euphemisms for what really are gender based relationships.
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The slave collar of political correctness may sound like a courtesy, but it is a slave collar that restricts your most precious and most personal part: your thoughts.
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And I will have none of it.  I believe that, along with HUMAN rights, gender exists although personal relationships and alliances are personal matters, not State ones.
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Indecent behavior and speech should be shunned and shamed and, where criminal, punished harshly. But the standards of decency must be in accord with the fundamentals of the First Amendment. Without exception. Without political correctness, a tool to narrow thought. Without special exceptions for the currently powerful.
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It is called justice, not partisan privilege.
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Rich kid kills someone? Same punishment as for poor kid who does the same.
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Politician assaults someone? Same punishment as for postman who does the same.
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Cop asphyxiates person? Grand jury. Person asphyxiates cop or another person? Grand jury.
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It’s called Justice, not Just Us! And it MUST be wise and prudent and BLIND, absolutely blind.
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We have a lot of work to do if, in fact, as I believe to my heart, ALL lives matter.
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And “leaders” who incite to hate and destruction are not leading. They are misleading, no matter what color their skin or political affiliation or tax status.
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All lives matter.
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Thoughts and prayers for peace are cool if you think and if you pray.
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But Justice is a necessity, not a nicety if, indeed, ALL lives really matter.
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Yours in health and freedom,
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Dr. Rima