There are two types of people who like to say all lives matter. Those who wish to derail the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement intentionally and those who truly believe in it and derail the BLM matter movement unintentionally. Our country is very racially divided and race relations are incredibly tense and will continue to be tense until people who say ‘all lives matter’ can put that phrase aside. Saying black lives matter doesn't mean white or non-black lives don't matter, which is something a lot of non-black people don't seem to understand.
For something to matter would mean that is has significance or importance, which is not how black lives are being treated at the present moment. Every time I hear or read someone say that all lives matter, my skin crawls. Do white lives matter? Sure they do, but they have never been treated like the black people nor will they ever be treated as such. White people do suffer but not because they're white but black people suffer just for being born black. Unless they are being treated as such and I missed something, but there is clearly a difference between how the two races are treated. All lives matter implies that every race in America is at the same equal risk when it comes to injustice and that simply isn't true. The phrase is dismissive of the struggles happening to black lives right now. That's like someone getting hit with a car and you tell them about the time you sprained your ankle. Sure, both incidents hurt, but clearly, one is much worse than other and to say the previous would be rude and and sounds like you're trying to diminish the other person's suffering so you don't have to feel as bad.
I know ‘all lives matter’ is dismissive because people didn't start saying it until Black Lives Matter began to trend. When black people began to become more noticeable with their pain, when we got louder. It's been happening but now that other races are being forced to acknowledge it, that makes them uncomfortable. As a black woman, I can't just ignore (and I don't I have the option to do so) that my people are dying because no one was or ever has treated them fairly in America. Black people still suffer today because of racism and prejudices from years ago and while white people are not responsible for what their ancestors did, they are responsible for upholding the oppressive system that is still in place against black people
I didn't capitalize ‘all lives matter’ because unlike ‘Black Lives Matter’, it isn't a real movement and I don't acknowledge it as such, either. Whether you mean it to be intentionally dismissive or not, with how bad of a state our country is in at the moment, now is not a time for the phrase to exist. Until white lives are treated like black lives, I will acknowledge the phrase. I will believe that all lives matter when they actually do, and it looks like we still have a long way to go.
