What’s wrong with all lives matter? Unless that’s an anti abortion dogwhistle. All born people’s lives matter as much as each other, anyway. I thought that was what BLM was saying, not that black people’s lives matter more than non-black people’s
ALM is a racist dog whistle.
Imagine if your house was on fire, but your neighbor insisted nobody do anything, because “all houses matter”.
In a vacuum sure, all houses do matter, but these phrases exist in context of opposing any action to fix the problem.
I completely agree. But I still think as a slogan/name of a movement BLM is still a bad choice. Exactly because of these discussions. Something like “Stop killing black people” would have been better. That’s something you can hardly misconstrue.
Bad actors could do the same and trot out “stop killing white people”
They’re not arguing in good faith. They’ll say anything if it advances their goals, without concern for consistency
Sure they could, but there is no epidemic of white people being killed and it’d sound ridiculous. While “all lives matter” is obviously true.
but there is no epidemic of white people being killed
Eh…
Sure, not white people in particular. But the cops do kill an awful lot of people. And plenty of those people are white. POC have a worse ‘epidemic’, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean ‘there is no epidemic of white people being killed’.
Then you need a movement like “Cops need to stop murdering people”.
We’ve already got that. It’s called ACAB.
“Chill the fuck out!”
It’s a dog whistle used only by white supremacists. No one deserves to be murdered by a cop, but whenever there’s police brutality against a white person, the ALM people are silent. I’ve only seen BLM people holding signs recognizing white victims.
Yes. It’s purely reactionary against BLM.
What do “all lives matter” people stand for? What do they protest for? What are their demands?
They have nothing. It’s just a big “Nuh-uh! What about me?” to BLM.
“Black lives matter” is a desperate cry for help from people subjected to the deadly violence of the police and of racist “neighbourhood watch vigilante wannabes” (killing or Trayvon Martin) or straight up lynchers (killing of Ahmaud Arbery), to demand “stop killing us”.
Now imagine responding to that “No! No! ALL Lives matter.”
People saying all lives matter are either that stupid to believe it means only black lives matter or that malicious to pretend it does when it was never implied.
I don’t know how to explain it better if you still don’t get it. It’s kinda like if I was passing through a famine stricken country and people dying from hunger told me they were hungry and I went “Well, everyone’s hungry” before turning a deaf ear to their suffering. It’s that disgusting.
It’s like if one person said “Free Palestine!” and someone replied, “so you’re saying that Canada shouldn’t be free? That’s discrimination, Free Everyone”. The two countries are clearly not dealing with the same threat to freedom, just the same as how white people don’t deal with the same level of state violence as minorities in the US. At best, replying “All Lives Matter” is presumptuous to the point of stupidity. But usually it’s just counter-propaganda to make people think that black Americans want some kind of supremacy, when really they just want to, you know, not be killed by cops and incarcerated at multiple times the rate of white people.
For the math-brained, think of this in terms of set theory: all lives can’t matter until black lives do - unless of course you’re one of those nazi’s that doesn’t believe that black people are people.
Because it intentionally distorts the meaning of “black lives matter” which is intended to call out historical black oppression.
Black lives matter, too. That’s all the message is. ALM is geared to say black lives matter more than us, which implies that the BLM message is doing, which it’s not.
In a vacuum, there’s nothing wrong with ALM, but it was used by scumbags a while back as a “counterpoint” to BLM. So while I do agree with the principle that all lives matter, I wouldn’t use it as a political standpoint, especially when BLM is the topic.
that is what BLM is saying, which is why the response “well, ALM” is bad. This implicitly says that BLM means “BLM more”.
For folk like us who perceive very little opposition to black folk in our locale, or value peace etc., All Lives Matter sounds far more logical than just Black Lives Matter, as the phrase ALM encompasses all life, as is our belief. To us BLM sounds like discrimination, black supremacy. In reality, the people that coined the phrase and stand by it intended to send a different message that the phrase doesn’t fully convey: Black Lives Matter As Well. Because where they are situated there is a strong pressure of authority and societal racism treating people whose melanin levels are higher as less important or less human. Said cruel society started using ALM as a counter, to once again belittle their black society.
It’s not the first time a nasty group of people appropriated good, well-meaning phrases and symbols for their own ends and it won’t be the last. The rest of us have to adapt and avoid association with them by not using the appropriated language.
Finally, those who comment that anyone who doesn’t think like they do are “stupid” are themselves egocentric, ignorant of other communities outside their own that do not share their struggles and either have never heard of, or do not have need of the BLM movement.
