“...And lastly, R.I.P. to my brothers and sisters who have died unfairly at the hand of police brutality. #BlackLivesMatter.”

“LOL, a black person’s life isn’t more important than any other life. #AllLivesMatter.”

*collective face-palm here*

All lives matter ... that sentence is nothing but a cruel slap to me and other black people, meant to drown out the Black Lives Matter movement, our way of explaining to the rest of the world that even in oh-so-progressive 2016 America, some of us still need to validate our right to live.

Maybe All Lives Matter will actually mean something to us when our kin aren’t labeled threats and thugs simply for the color of their skin.

All lives will matter when people with accents stop being told to go back to wherever they came from, that they have no right to be there, just because they don’t speak English as well as the rest of us.

All lives will finally matter when we don’t have to raise our children to fear and be wary of the government and police that are supposed to be there to protect them.

Then again, if my son happens to be wearing a hoodie, then he’s suspicious and that warrants several rounds of lead being unleashed in his head.

Perhaps all lives will matter when I don’t have to watch another black mother lay her 16-year-old baby boy in the ground. He could have changed his community for the better, but instead, he became target practice under the flickering street lamps.

All lives will matter when those who answer to different pronouns or who happen to be attracted to the same sex aren’t bullied relentlessly, or even thrown out of their families’ homes because they can’t help who they are.

All lives will matter when girls can go out dressed modestly and with their hair covered without fear of being called a terrorist.

All lives will matter when little black boys don’t face the grim reality of becoming a drug runner if they somehow don’t make it as a rapper or athlete.

All lives will matter when little black girls finally understand that they don’t need to look like the light-skinned, straight-haired model on the poster to be beautiful.

All lives will matter when black children stop being taught to be sorry.

Sorry for what?

I was hoping you could tell me.

Maybe they have to be sorry for the kink in their hair or for the fact their skin just isn’t fair.

Or maybe they have to be sorry for their full lips, or maybe it’s their beautiful, unmanageable curls that they have to be sorry for.

Do they have to be sorry that they dare to reach for the sky, for dreams that will move them out of the ghetto where their families were forced decades earlier by a city planner who saw them as little more than a set of worthless pawns?

They dare to hope that they won’t become another faceless, nameless number in the sea of high school dropouts and teen parents.

They dare to hope that they’ll be an exception to the black stereotype and get a job that’ll keep them off welfare.

Tell me, do they have to be sorry for daring to dream of a place where their children will not be labelled as thugs and thieves, doomed to pass through the prison system again and again?

What about daring to pray that they won’t ever be looking down the barrel of a police officer’s, or rather any gun under the amber of streetlamps.

They dare to hope that maybe they won’t have to march through the streets with their hands up, crying out, “I can’t breathe!” because an unjust system, no support and a self-hatred generations deep is slowly but surely choking the life out of them.

They dare to hope that their black lives will matter to somebody.

Is that what they have to be sorry for?

Is that what I have to be sorry for?

Do I have to be sorry for wanting to validate my right to live?

For wanting the system to acknowledge the wrongs against me and my people?

For wanting American society to acknowledge the anti-black conditioning that is so deeply ingrained in our culture and traditions, that it will take generations for a total detox from the poisons of stereotyping, racism and prejudice born of misunderstandings?

If you’re waiting on an apology for wanting our voices heard, then keep on walking.

We’re not going to be quiet, because we have to explain that All Lives Matter will actually mean something when we start acting like black lives matter, too.

Every life is beautiful, precious and unique in its own way, and each one should be treated as such.

AlllLives will matter when all people, across all cultures, traditions, genders, nations, religions, sexual orientation and yes, especially races can all be seen as equal.

No exceptions.