I posted a little something on Facebook at roughly 5 am, with the
thought, Right. I'll fix it in Post. And so, after more than 12 hours of
percolation, I present a less rough cut of the idea that Black Lives Matter and
Blue Lives Matter are not mutually exclusive sentiments. Please enjoy.
In a Facebook post about the recent murders
of law enforcement officers, Frank Somerville, a Bay Area news anchor, noted
Not all police are bad.
And not all young black men a criminals.
And I think we all need to realize that.
I would modify his
statement to say not all black people are
criminals, but in essence, his point is what I've tried to make in previous
blog posts.
See, if you post an item
to social media with language like but cops shoot black criminals and people are up in
arms,
I get the impression you
don't understand the second line of Mr. Somerville's statement. It would seem
you believe that when law enforcement chooses to interact with a black person,
that black person is automatically, and perhaps inherently, a criminal.
That belief is a lie.
Some of the negative
assumptions about who black people are (and what black people deserve) are at
the root of the incidents which spurred the term Black Lives Matter. To refute
with All Lives Matter ignores both our history AND our present. All Lives is
something to aspire to, not something that is.
Because if all lives
truly mattered, we wouldn't tolerate the racism,
sexism and classism which exist in our society. If we truly
believed all lives mattered, we would act accordingly. To insist
All Lives Matter is the current state of affairs is an exercise in delusion.
But
If by stating All Lives Matter you are expressing a desire or determination
to turn a dream into reality, you are echoing the sentiment of Black Lives
Matter. For in a small way, that is what the movement seeks to do.
One more thing.
It's easy to fall into the mutual exclusivity trap. It may seem
the friend who posts tons of pro-Black Lives Matter stuff doesn't care about
Blue Lives,
and the friend who posts tons of pro-Blue Lives Matter stuff
doesn't care about Black Lives.
But unless they've told you as much – either directly or via the
comments they've posted – you have no basis for such an assumption. The two sentiments are not mutually exclusive.
Instead, consider such friends as
being on one of the many fronts of a battle to protect innocent lives.
