Jessica Doty-Whitaker is the woman you see in the picture above, with her fiance and little boy. Perhaps you’ve heard of her. But my guess is you haven’t. Hers is not a name that big media would plaster all over their news cycles. She doesn’t fit the narrative. But she’s dead. Gone. She leaves behind a three year-old son and fiance. A little boy will never know his mother, and a man who by all accounts loved her dearly, will never get to see her or hold her. Never again. Why? Because she said all lives matter, and some scumbag with a gun thought pulling the trigger on her was the right thing to do.
I’ve been thinking about what to say since last night. Last night my blood was boiling, I was white hot angry, and unable to think straight. My temper went from sunny day to Atomic Armageddon in a matter of seconds, but I have cooled enough to think clearly. I have a temper. A rather nasty one too in certain situations. I am a fiery, passionate man. But usually I am so numb to all the stories of deaths reported in the media, big and small, that I usually I don’t find myself getting this angry.
And it’s not that I don’t care. Believe me, I care. One life lost to senseless violence, be they straight, gay, black, white, brown, yellow, red, and everything in between, is one life too many. I just normally get so exhausted with the saturation pushed of depressing and political garbage that I become desensitized to everything.
But when I read about what happened to Jessica Doty-Whitaker last week, something snapped inside me. I initially became white hot angry because the circumstances of her death were incredibly heartbreaking. Some woman voiced her opinion, and was shot to death. Her fiance held her lifeless body in his arms. And he now has to tell her little boy that his mother went to Heaven.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear: Yes, it was wrong that one of her friends supposedly uttered a racial slur at one of the Black Lives Matter supporters. But where is murdering someone the appropriate response? That’s where I was angry for a second reason: Black Lives Matter aims to fight against injustice. But what about when one of their members, or several of them, commit injustices, evils, and flat out heinous crimes like these? They’re silent on the matter!
Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi are the three women who founded Black Lives Matter. And they have no clue how much good it would do them, and their organization, if they spoke out against, and distanced themselves from BLM members like the one who killed Jessica Doty-Whitaker. All lives won’t matter until Black Lives Matter? Does whatever that looks like, include a young mother as collateral? Is she a necessary loss or casualty on the road to justice and equality? Is she a means to an end? If you are a decent human being who values human life, irrespective of color or station, you know the answer to these questions.
The third reason I became incredibly angry over the death of Jessica Doty-Whitaker, was that outside of a small media bubble (and this article), seemingly no one is crying out for justice over her death. The massive media machine, with its ever-churning agenda, apparently didn’t see her as good enough to use as fuel. It didn’t see her as a useful vehicle for furthering the division and hatred in this country. And it certainly did not see her as a human being. She’s merely another statistic.
But I write these words to take a stand for Jessica Doty-Whitaker and her family. I take a stand against big media. And I call out the leaders of Black Lives Matter: She mattered. Did I know her personally? No. If I had, I’d want to hunt down the criminal responsible for her death myself. But she mattered to her parents, fiance, and little boy she leaves behind.
I know they won’t read this and I am perfectly okay with that. But I call on the leaders of Black Lives Matter to expand their scope and reach. Police brutality is indeed an issue in this country, and I believe officers should be held accountable. But I call on Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi, to have the tough conversation about fixing Black culture. A conversation where nuclear families are championed, where thuggish behavior is shamed and condemned, and where the deaths of Jessica Doty-Whitaker and other innocent people are mourned just as much as the deaths of George Floyd, Breona Taylor and others. They owe Jessica and her family that much.
I stand with Jessica Doty-Whitaker, and I stand against Black Lives Matter. An organization that preaches social justice, yet refuses to practice it all across the board for all people, irrespective of color, gets no respect or support from me. She mattered, as does every human life. That’s how we’re seen in the ideal America we should be striving to create. All should have the inalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. And every life matters to God. He doesn’t seem to see the color of our skin. So why should we?
Luke's Thoughts 