[NB: I put colors used as races of humans in quotation marks. Barring genetic rarities, humans actually only come in one color—brown—of which we are all various shades, and the shades overlap the lines of race. I grant race as a sociological construct, but it is one that we need to dismantle pronto. We need to all start thinking of ourselves as various shades of brown rather than any of these inaccurate colors, and I’m hoping to remind everyone of that every time they see the scare quotes.]
A few days ago, when I started this post, my sister forwarded me an article from the BBC’s site about a Ugandan broadcaster apologizing for showing one of its employees wearing an “All Live Matter” T-shirt on the air.
It said that:
The phrase All Lives Matter is often deemed as an antithesis to the Black Lives Matter campaign that highlights systemic discrimination of black people.
HUH?!
Given that “black” lives are by definition a subset of all lives, how can All Lives Matter possibly be an antithesis?
I grant that “black” lives are greatly devalued in current American society (for example, lynching was only recently made illegal) and that the bias goes far back, almost as long as there have been Europeans in the Western Hemisphere. They may well be the most discriminated against, too. I think the First Nations might argue with that, and discrimination against them has been going on since before Europeans first brought Africans to American shores. I am willing to stipulate that, however, to continue with the points of the argument that I think are of more concern.
And certainly what rational human being thinks kneeling on someone’s neck is an acceptable form of restraint? So very many vital systems come together there that there are probably more ways to kill someone by kneeling on their neck than kneeling on any other part of their body! As a form of execution, sure, very effective (although still not acceptable), but not as a form of restraint! Then when I found out that Mr. Floyd was not the first person to be so killed and yet the practice went on . . . well, words are not sufficient for some levels of horror.
But surely the whole impetus behind Black Lives Matter is that All Lives Matter. “Black” lives—and any other subset of all lives—matter precisely because all lives matter. And to put any specific adjective on the lives that matter implies that there are lives that don’t matter or at least matter less: otherwise, where is the need to specify? That plays right into the hands of the Some Lives Don’t Matter crowd, which is the real enemy of us all (even of themselves). Even those few who don’t have some attribute that is currently on someone’s list of those who don’t matter may someday find themselves on one.
Also specifying lives that do matter makes the job piecemeal. For instance, at some point Irish lives Didn’t Matter, but then they did, while many, many other lives—at the time, Asian, “black,” First Nations, Latino, and many others—were still on the Don’t Matter list. And most of those still are. If we do it one group at a time, it will take centuries more to go through the list, and it is much easier for the Some Don’t Matter people to return previously removed groups to it in the same piecemeal way. Certainly with the intolerant group in the Executive Branch at present, that is more than a hypothetical possibility.
It also allows the intolerant to set up false dichotomies of the “black”/”blue” or “black”/”white” sort, pitting individual groups against each other (and those unfortunates in both groups against both). If we say All Lives Matter and refuse to acknowledge that in order for one group to gain Mattering, another must lose, the Some Don’t Matter group loses their most used and useful weapon. That alone would be a great benefit to everyone (even the Some Don’t Matter bunch, but they don’t have long-enough vision to see that).
We should all have each other’s backs against the Some Don’t Matter crowd. Whenever they do something to indicate that any lives don’t matter or at least matter less, we should all be standing up, facing them saying, “All Lives Matter!”
So that’s what I will go on saying. The last thing it does is serve the interests of anyone who wants anyone not to matter.