Whose Life Is It Anyway?

#MeToo
#HimToo
#BlackLivesMatter
#AllLivesMatter
And so on. Just as soon as someone shouts out from the bottom of the pile about oppression, an anguished cry comes from some other corner, suggesting that, "you think you're oppressed? Try taking a walk in my moccasins." And so this merry-go-round of judgement continues. The saddest part of all of this equivocation is that it dulls the reality of those who are truly suffering.
It also means that we as a society are relieved of any responsibility for that suffering.
Lucky us.
It's a matter of math. African American males are two and a half times more likely to be shot by police. If there were two and a half times more African American males than white males, that would make sense. That's why it doesn't make sense. That's why people are upset. That's why there is a movement.
Here in the United States, one in five women will be raped in their lifetime. That contrasts smartly with one in seventy-one men who will be raped during their lives. Which does not mean that we should ignore the trauma inflicted on men, but since the perpetrators of those rapes are overwhelmingly men, it seems as though mounting  a movement to protect men from being wrongfully accused of these crimes seems like a secondary concern.
People being wrongfully accused of crimes is a big deal, but wait just a second: Guess who is more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder? Did you guess African Americans? Which is just a hop without a skip or jump away from the percentage of the prison population, which happens to be thirty-seven percent African American males compared to thirty-two percent white males.
And so it goes. Until there really is an "us" in the U.S., we need to keep our eyes on the realities we create. Not the ones we imagine.