Black And Blue

The Black Lives Matter movement is not about killing white people or white police officers. And the recent ambush-style shootings in Dallas that left five police officers dead and seven officers injured should not be allowed to distort that fact.

At a news conference held the morning after what has been called the deadliest day for police since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said the suspect in the deadly sniper-style attack, later identified as 25 year-old Micah Xavier Johnson, stated to a negotiator before being killed by a robot-detonated bomb that he was:

“Upset about Black Lives Matter.”

“Upset about the recent police [involved] shootings.”

“Upset at white people.”

Chief Brown said Johnson, a former Army Reservist, also said he wanted to “kill white people, especially white officers” and that he “carried out his attack alone.”

As the investigation into the reprehensible crime ensues, it is important that this tragedy not be allowed to distort the narrative or derail the heart of what this movement is actually about. In the hours since the attack, BLM leaders have condemned the slayings of police during what began as a peaceful protest over the fatal police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota, with noted BLM supporter and blogger Shaun King calling the violence “wrong on every level.”

Just as President Obama noted in a statement hours after the attack, this was “a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement.”

I’ll take it a step further, and say ironically this heinous, cowardly and completely unwarranted crime, in many ways, speaks to the very heart of what Black Lives Matter is about – the eradication of senseless violence and the loss of innocent human life.

Those officers did not deserve to be attacked just for being cops, or for being white or for doing their jobs. Many of them probably woke up that morning, kissed their spouses and hugged their kids on the way out the door, only to be left literally fighting for their lives barely 24 hours later; five of them will never again see their loved ones because a person who was clearly uninformed about the tenets of the BLM campaign, opted to murder them in cold blood.

Don’t get it twisted, Black Lives Matter is not about putting black lives over white lives, “blue lives” or any person’s life for that matter – it’s about advocating for a society where all lives are valued equally and that ideology be substantiated in the outcomes of all interactions with law enforcement. BLM is about asserting that the color of someone’s skin, their economic status, sexual orientation or the fact that they do or do not carry a badge, should never determine how others are allowed to treat them.

In short, BLM is not about hating police, it’s about hating police brutality. And that’s something everyone should be willing to support.

Chandra Thomas Whitfield is an award-winning Denver-based print, broadcast and multimedia journalist and regular contributor to NBCNews.com/NBCBLK. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of media outlets, including Essence, Ebony, People, Newsweek, JET, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and TIME.com. She has also been honored by the Colorado Association of Black Journalists, Mental Health America and the Atlanta Chapter of the New Leaders Council. She has previously earned “Journalist of the Year” honors from the Atlanta Press Club and the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists.