I've lost any sense of how the slogan "blacklivesmatter" is supposed to be helpful to anyone.
Sure, it's a shocker, but as someone who doesn't respond to knee-jerk inflammatory rhetoric, my first reaction was "does that mean mine doesn't, or is less than, because I'm not black?"
Is this such a surprising response?
#BLACKLIVESMATTER is a flawed & unhelpful mem that doesn't translate well in the larger picture of the fight against inequality.
There is no doubt, black people suffer heavy handed & oft times illegal treatment both by law enforcement & unequal justice, in shockingly disproportionate numbers. This has to be changed.
Does it make sense to say to people that are just seeing your problem, they have no idea what your problem is because they're not you?
Is it such a stretch to see how unproductive it is to shout down someone by telling them they can't say "all lives matter" when they want to be inclusive?
If your pants are on fire, will you not let someone help whose aren't, because they don't know what it's like? I'd hate to see the day when a protest is comprised of only black people.
It's called empathy. It can be quite the motivator, but is hard to see from inside the arena.
To right the wrongs of injustice, it will take a huge number of very vocal participants. If someone says to me "you can't say white lives matter or all lives matter", we will not be walking shoulder to shoulder into the fray. It tells me I am not welcome. Why am I not welcome? Because I'm not black? That's a racist attitude. I thought that was our common enemy.
If #blacklivesmatter is supposed to somehow aid in the fight for racial equality, it needs to be applicable to ALL races. It would sound a whole lot better as part of a chorus.
Shouting someone else down never makes your message any louder, it diminishes it.
#wordsmatter #alllivesmatter