All Lives Matter

Scott Hardie | August 6, 2015
What drives the "all lives matter" counter-movement, the one that responds to the "black lives matter" movement with that phrase? Does anybody know? I wonder:

1) Who has a problem with a movement that seeks to reduce the number of black civilian deaths caused by police?

2) How does the phrase "all lives matter" counter the notion that "black lives matter" (in the latter's political context)?

Perhaps it's a problem with grammatical assumptions.

Scott Hardie | September 12, 2015
Having spent more time with people who proudly proclaim "all lives matter," I must conclude that it is indeed that specific misunderstanding: They really do think that the "black lives matter" movement literally means to say "only black lives matter," It seems insane to me in far-left liberal land that anyone could make that mistake, but I suppose if Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and other talking heads kept promoting the idea, that would explain it.

The whole thing makes me sick. My apologies to anyone on either side of the fence who I've bothered with any of this.

Samir Mehta | September 12, 2015
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | September 25, 2015
Agreed about Syria. Even sadder is how readily many people would agree to military intervention and not humanitarian aid, preferring to cause mass destruction at high cost instead of to bring mass relief at comparatively low cost.

I read an interview with Trump supporters in a magazine that quoted one woman troubled by what she interpreted as Black Lives Matter's implicit devaluing of white people's problems. I paraphrase from memory: "It's like no matter how hard you've worked to get where you are in life, they're saying that because you're not black, your own struggle doesn't matter." Not only does she conflate her own struggle to support herself with black people's plea to stop being murdered by police, but she blames that conflation on BLM. Even the people who perceive BLM as an general attack on all police are not as far off base as the ordinary white people like this woman who filter this movement about blackness through their white-people prism and think it's about them or says anything at all about them.

More on perceiving attacks on police: Shows of support for police are fashionable this summer, but if they're motivated by murders of police officers, they're misguided. Police deaths are at a decades-long low, and no cops killed this year were targeted because they were cops.