Stevie Wonder, the man I always wanted to sing at my wedding if one should ever happen, made an appearance at the North Minneapolis Conference on Peace on Saturday. The iconic singer spoke about Black Lives Matter but took a line out of the “All Lives Matter” playbook when he went all “You black people kill each other.”
“It is in your hands to stop all the killing and all the shooting wherever it might be. Because you cannot say black lives matter and then kill yourselves,” Wonder stated.
“We’ve mattered long before it was said, but the way we show that we matter; the way that we show that all the various people of color matter, is by loving each other and doing something about it, not just talking about it,” Wonder continued.
The black-on-black-crime trope that people love to throw out there when talking about the Black Lives Matter movement is such low-hanging fruit and grasping at straws. But it doesn’t shock me one bit that it’s the only thing a celebrity can say when trying to discuss systemic racism and the problematic law-enforcement and judicial systems that have people yelling “Black lives matter” to begin with.