“Imagine that you’re sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don’t get any. So you say ‘I should get my fair share.’ And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you saying, ‘everyone should get their fair share.’ Now, that’s a wonderful sentiment-indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share also. However, dad’s smart ass comment just dismissed you and didn’t solve the problem that you still haven’t gotten any!”
The paragraph above was taken from an article published on fusion.net, written by Kevin Roose, and it illustrates why stating “all lives matter” in response to the “black lives matter” movement is dismissive and ignores the real issue at hand.
For those that don’t understand, “black lives matter” does NOT mean that only black lives matter, it does NOT mean that black lives are more important than any others, and it does NOT mean that all lives don’t matter. It is simply a reminder that black lives matter TOO! Our culture, laws, religions, etc. suggest that people’s lives matter, and almost no one would disagree with you if you said people’s lives should be valued. The problem is, historically, and currently still, all lives have not been treated equally.
Black lives have been devalued here in America for longer than the United States has been an independent nation. Slavery, 3/5 Compromise, the Dred Scott decision, Jim Crow laws, miscegenation laws, lack of voting rights, the KKK and mob lynchings, all of these have served to show that black lives don’t matter like everyone else’s. Even now, inequalities exists because of these past injustices, blacks are disproportionately arrested and killed by police officers. The killings of young black men like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner sparked the “black lives matter” movement, because to the supporters they represented the systematic and perpetual disregard for black lives, something that has not been targeted to “all lives”, which is why an “all lives matter” slogan was never created…….UNTIL the “black lives matters” movement came about.
Therein lies the difference between the two mottos, “all lives matter” was solely created as a direct response to the “black lives matter” movement, to remind “black lives matters” supporters of something they already know and agree upon. But this unnecessary reminder dismisses the problem that the “Black lives matter” movement is trying to highlight, and it disregards the necessary reminder that black people’s lives deserve the same regard and value as all lives. It was also created to draw attention to issues so that we can change them, and progress to a society that treats all lives equally, INCLUDING black lives, since historically they haven’t been treated equally, and still today, they are not. Saying “all lives matter” as a response to “black lives matter” dismisses and ignores the problems that are trying to be solved, and it erases the voice of a marginalized group that deserves to be listened to.
Once again, return to the scenario in the first paragraph and try to see how these situations are analogous. If you state that you deserve food like everyone else, is it fair for someone to respond by solely stating that everyone deserves food, and doing nothing about it?
