These past few weeks have been very interesting in the black community. With the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, a large number of protests broke out all over the country. Though they were meant to be peaceful protests, some took a turn for the worse. In Dallas, 5 police officers were killed and 3 more were killed in Baton Rouge. There was even a warning that some of the #BlackLivesMatter protests would be violent and to stay away.

After Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were shot, people, including myself, were changing their profile pictures to a blacked out screen saying “#BlackLivesMatter” in bold, white print. Of course, with #BlackLivesMatter always comes #AllLivesMatter.

• If all lives mattered, you wouldn’t mind us saying black lives matter.
• We aren’t saying our lives matter more than anyone else, we’re simply focusing on ours at the moment.
• It’s dismissive. #AllLivesMatter is just another ‘tone deaf slogan’ to put the current problems that the black community is facing on the back burner or embraces the thought of a colorblind society.
• It proves white privilege. Most white people don’t think about their race because they don’t have to live in the atmosphere that blatantly mistreats them because of their skin color.

That all goes to say, #AllLivesMatter is irrelevant and downright disrespectful.

Next is the Dallas shooting, which caused #BlueLivesMatter to trend. As a young black girl, it was astonishing to me at how quickly people would drop my community. I’m not saying that police lives don’t matter, but they are only “blue” forty hours a week whereas we are black 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. There's a big difference there. I respect that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but some things just don't make sense.

Now, one last thing. WE ARE NOT ALL THE SAME. If one white racist doesn't mean all white people are racist, why would you think that all of my people are the same? I can easily prove this to you. During the civil rights movements from 1954 to 1968, there were many leaders and activists but they can mostly be categorized into two different types; the violent and the nonviolent. The "violent" way back then would be Malcolm X and the way people thought the Black Panther Party was (though they were just protecting the black community from police brutality, so people were WRONG... Just saying). The "nonviolent" would have been Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nina Simone. Because even back then there were at least 2 different types of black people in the community, who were raised and grew up at the time, there has to be 2, if not more, types of black people.

Don't be afraid of what you don't know, Educate yourselves with things other than what the media portrays.