Matter of...

There is something that I find myself wondering whenever I see a "Black Lives Matter" flag, sign et cetera.

Matter to whom?

As a Black person myself, I understand that our lives matter to ourselves (although I understand why so many people are willing to argue that). But who else do they matter to? What brought Black Lives Matter into existence in the first place was the perception that the lives of Black people were expendable when it came to White America's perceptions of crime and safety. And while the movement has pushed back against the mindset that allowed for Black people to be killed so that White people could feel that they were being protected, actually changing the factors that led to it in the first place is a much thornier problem.

As an Intrinsic matter, human life can be said to be priceless. People are unique and non-fungible; once someone loses a partner, child or other loved one, it's not possible to simply find another person with the right age, ethnicity et cetera and simply slot them in. But from and Instrumental viewpoint, things are quite different. Human lives are worth what people are ready, willing and able to pay to preserve them. And the United States has, generally speaking, never been particularly willing to make large outlays for that purpose. The broadly-based economic slowdown that has been imposed in order to combat the now-waning SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is something of an outlier in this case, and it's something of a unique instance; were the disease less random in the way it impacts people, it would have been unlikely to have engendered the response that it has. As a counter-example, consider influenza. While the flu can easily claim 50,000 lives over the course of a year, it's generally ignored; none of the measures in place to contain the pandemic are in place for the flu, even though some much more limited version of them would likely be effective.

Part of the reason for the unusual response to pandemic was a sense of its universality; anyone could become sick, anyone could become a carrier, therefore, no one was "safe" from the disease. But when it comes to things like the killing of George Floyd or the recent shooting death of Daunte Wright, there isn't a sense that they can happen to anyone. While people may understand that cases like those of Daniel Shaver happen, it's unlikely that most people one might meet on the street take the protracted, and eventually deadly, game of "Simon Says" that Mr. Shaver was forced into as something that might happen to them.

And there is no other consequence.

The President Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta might have come to the conclusion that eliminating bias and racism would boost GDP, but precious few other people seem to agree. And so, in the grand scheme if things, the lives lost are not missed. People in general are expendable, in no small part due to the level of effort that's gone into making it that way. Death happens, and organizations that suddenly collapse due to the death of an important person are seen as unprepared. If CEOs can die and the world goes on, then why can't some random Joe on the street be gunned down without any broader consequence?

And this is why lives don't matter. People don't miss them when they are ended. Families may grieve and friends may bear sorrow, but the rest of us never notice unless someone tells us what happened. My life is no more difficult this morning because Daunte Wright is dead than it was on Sunday. And I suspect that tens, if not hundreds of millions of people are in the same situation. The deaths that Black Lives Matter protests are tragic, but in an instrumental sense, they have no impact. The Sun will still come up tomorrow, millions of people will go to work by "commuting" from their bedrooms to their living rooms and they will do their jobs reasonably secure in the knowledge that death will not come for them; and in the fact that it has come for others is, in a very real sense, not their problem.

"Black Lives Matter" may be a powerful slogan, but in the end, it is just that; a slogan. It's not something that the majority of Americans feel and experience in their day-to-day lives. And until that changes; until the value of a Black Life moves from the Intrinsic to the Instrumental, the inherent expendability of people will mitigate against any and all efforts to make it reality.