At this point, anyone plugged into any form of media is at least somewhat aware of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the oppositional movement, #AllLivesMatter. While the pushers of #AllLivesMatter maintain that it is not an oppositional movement at all, that their message is one of expressing true equality and refraining from putting any one demographic ahead of the rest, the reality is that it is merely another attempt to silence the oppressed and invalidate their message.
With this particular topic on my mind, I recently happened upon a Buzzfeed video called “If #AllLivesMatter Were Applied to Everyday Life”. The video presented several satirical situations in which the logic of “all (blanks) matter” was applied in order to illustrate the laughable fallacy of the argument. While I understood what the Buzzfeed team was attempting to communicate, I found that even this satirization did not fully cover the absolute farce that is #AllLivesMatter. One situation presented in the video was a man who had taken his car into the shop asking to have one small, scratched area buffed out, and the mechanic responding with “We gotta paint the whole car…If we paint one part of the car, we gotta paint the whole car. It all matters.” While this is relatively comical and is attempting to send the right message, the reality is that the #AllLivesMatter logic, applied to this situation would produce an even more absurd and nonsensical scene. #AllLivesMatter logic would not have you paint the whole car for the one spot that is scratched. It would, instead, insist on leaving the scratched part scratched because that is “just the way things are on that part of the car” and continuing with regular maintenance on the rest of the undamaged vehicle because we would never want those well-maintained parts to feel like they are being treated unfairly because of the noisy complaining of this selfish scratched-up spot.
Another farcical aspect of the #AllLivesMatter counter-movment is the assumption that #BlackLivesMatter translates directly to hatred of and violence towards police. Thus, the addition of #BlueLivesMatter arose in response to the shooting of Dallas and Baton Rouge police officers. This is only a further extension of the #AllLivesMatter fallacy. We know blue lives matter. If blue lives didn’t matter, shooters Micah Johnson and Gavin Long, posthumously identified perpetrators of the Dallas and Baton Rouge shootings, would not have been shot at the scenes of their respective crimes. They would not have even had to stand trial. If blue lives were treated the way black lives are, Johnson and Long would have gone free with little more than a slap on the wrist just like the now countless officers who have been entirely pardoned of their crimes of excessive force, general brutality and murder. Clearly, the public is fully aware that those blue lives matter, for the black lives that took them were taken in response. But the black lives taken without just cause received no justice, because their lives clearly mattered less than the blue lives that took them.
#AllLivesMatter does not mean “all lives matter”. It means “look down,” it means “stay back,” it means “be quiet,” and it means “yours doesn’t.” So please, if you feel the need to respond to #BlackLivesMatter, don't say #AllLivesMatter. Say #IDontCare. It is more accurate and more honest.
