All Lives Matter

 All lives matter.  That is irrefutable.  However, that as a response to “black lives matter” is problematic.  Not only is it problematic because you are assuming that one discounts the other (flawed logic) but also because you are subscribing to a notion that minimizes someone else’s life and their experiences.  Not one single person who has uttered or agreed to the phrase black lives matter has ever said so at the expense of any other lives.  In fact, the movement supports other causes to bring to light the marginalization of others in minority groups.  We could sit here and argue back and forth what the movement stands for and why you are for or against it, but instead I think we should focus more on the flawed logic of the former statement.  Inherently, that is the place where an appeal to reason and a reframing can be made.  For those with open minds who are receptive to other’s ideas and inputs and who are willing to look at themselves and their ideals and can adapt to new information are the only ones whose minds will ever be swayed in a short-term way.

Recognizing one thing does not mean the remainder is inconsequential.  In fact, you do this on a daily basis.  When you wake up you have to choose what to do first.  Do you turn off the alarm or go use the bathroom or start making breakfast or meditate or pray or start working et cetera et cetera.  You make a choice about what matters most in that moment to you and your day and you do it without much thought, almost as an instinct.  If you chose to turn off the alarm, does that mean you can’t now use the bathroom or do anything else?  If you use the bathroom does that mean the alarm goes off for the remainder of your day?  You choose to recognize in each moment of your day-to-day life what is taking priority right then and right there, and you work to address the biggest issue you are facing.  That doesn’t mean that the other issues have less value, it doesn’t mean that draining your bladder is the only thing you can do and that breakfast or work cannot also be addressed, it just means that the occasion right then is one that necessitates a response that is more urgent than the others.  For hundreds of years in the United States, black lives were treated in a way that has said they are secondary.  In fact, they were treated in a way that viscerally showed that in fact, not all lives matter.  If you put aside slavery (hi, this is privilege, I can put aside the fact that people who look like me OWNED people who looked different than me, because it predated my life by more than 100 years) you can still easily point to thousands of other ways where black lives (alongside other minorities) were shown to be less important and valuable than others.  A different bathroom, school, voting rights, or interactions with police are quick and easy examples to point to that fly in the face of “all lives matter”.  The black lives matter movement is one that stands up with the sense of urgency because in fact repeated occasions point to a significant and urgent need for the greater population to take notice of how unequal things actually are.  On paper, things are SUPPOSED to be equitable.  In reality the experience of a black man is drastically different than a white one.

Maybe that doesn’t drive the point home for you.  Let’s go with music.  You probably have a favorite song, or artist, genre or radio station you listen to more than others.  Does that preclude your ability to enjoy others?  If you love “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” does that mean that you will never listen to “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” because one has value over the other, and therefore you cling to it exclusively?  That’s going to be a pretty boring Christmas morning playlist if so, and a really long Christmas season only listening to one song.  I love Christmas music and own thousands of Christmas songs.  They all matter to me, but there are some that I can skip on some days and others that if they come on, I have to stop what I am doing, turn them up, and enjoy them as loudly and off key as I can sing. Again, in that exact moment, I choose that one, but only because that urgency exists in that moment, and not because it is the only one that matters.  You probably have albums where you skip certain tracks on certain days, or maybe you skip that one every day.  Are you going to tell the artist and the record company “this song doesn’t matter”? Probably not.  In fact, there are probably people who love that song and would choose that song over many other tracks on the album.  All of those songs matter, but in certain moments, some of those songs matter a little bit more and deserve your attention and recognition.

Let’s talk sports now.Some people LOVE sports, and others don’t invest any time at all in sports, or maybe they shy away from certain sports because it isn’t for them.If you love football and hate baseball, does that mean that baseball doesn’t matter?Arguably no, it just means that baseball isn’t important to YOU.Countless millions of other people have a different experience than you.But take a sport you love.We will say football since in the United States football is one of if not the most watched sport now. Did your team win the title last year?If you said no, does that mean your team doesn’t matter?If your team did win last year, do they win every year?Let’s go even further.There is usually one player recognized as “the best”.In college maybe that distinction is the Heisman and in the pro’s the league MVP.Is that the only important player or just the one that rose to the occasion to be noticed because of what was going on in a specific time span?If that is the only important player, I eagerly await seeing how well they do in their next game in a one versus eleven situation, because you are saying only one matters and the rest are inconsequential.Again, in that situation, all the players matter, the one cannot excel without the others.All lives matter, but the black lives cannot excel until people recognize that in this moment, we have to recognize their cause and their plight.It does not discount those of us who are not black. It doesn’t say we do not matter.Instead, what it says is that “today, in this instance, these people need recognition and support”.