Ralph Yarl is the latest, tragic example of how little America values Black lives.
We’ve always known that Black lives are disposable.
As useless as yesterday’s trash.
We are acceptable to provide labor.
Cooking your meals, scrubbing your floors, and minding your children are fine, but the irony that you simultaneously raise them to hate and kill us is more than painful.
It’s permissible to entertain you. Our songs, jokes, and dancing provide you with untold hours of amusement.
We can run and catch footballs, dunk basketballs, and hit baseballs, as long as we shut up and play ball.
Anything else, which includes mistakenly ringing the wrong doorbell, is likely to get us killed.
Ralph Yarl is only 16 years old.
He got his directions wrong and was shot in the head for his mistake.
And please, we don’t want to hear that he’s 84 years old.
His age is an excuse.
If anything, he’s old enough to know better.
The boy was unthreatening.
He’s an honor student who plays the bass clarinet.
He’s not a menace to society.
The elderly racist who tried to kill him is the menace.
If Black Lives really Mattered, every White mother in America would be in tears and crying for justice.
As it happens, it seems that our lives matter to us, and otherwise to a select few.
We are discardable.
We are disposable.
Unless we are meeting your needs.
Ralph Yarl is paying the price.
His is almost as steep as it gets.
But to be Black in America means that you are born to pay a heavy price for something that you didn’t choose.
None of us get off paying pennies.
At a minimum, we pay hundreds of dollars.
Some thousands.
Some hundreds of thousands.
Ralph Yarl paid almost a million.
And he’s not through paying.
And neither is America.