How to Start Turning “All Lives Matter” Into “Black Lives Matter”
To non-BIPOC advocates with sincere appreciation, thank you. Perhaps you don’t think that you deserve gratitude, and to this I might agree. Still, I, as a black male weighed down by the incessant burden of marginalization, give to you who help us lift even a fraction of this historical mass my thanks. For practicing actionable mindsets. For genuinely educating yourself on the black life struggle. For putting your money, in both behavior and organization, where your mouth is. You are reworking white identity in real-time, and so, one last time, I thank you. Now, as we move forward, I want to show you how to engage more effectively with your peers. Over the course of two articles, I would like to break down for you step-by-step how to change “all lives matter” into “black lives matter.”
Now, before we step, the most important aspect of effectively engaging anyone is deciding whether or not they can be engaged with. Based on the experience I’ve gathered from others and in encounters I’ve been personally entangled, there appear to be two “all lives matter” camps, which we will differentiate as #ALLLIVESMATTER (#ALM) and #alllivesmatter (#alm).
Over the course of two articles, I would like to break down for you step-by-step how to change “all lives matter” into “black lives matter.”
#ALM typically host two distinct, but not mutually exclusive groups of people. The first group we can call New-Age White Supremacists, or “NAWS” if you need an easy way to think about them. These individuals sloganeer #ALM as a way of bringing more people into their explicitly racist agenda. To NAWS, the hashtag’s primary purpose is to pull “white power” deeper into the 21st century. The second group of people are red-herring ringleaders. They use #ALM as an umbrella for the issue(s) they actually care about. To them, the hashtag’s primary purpose is to set up a discussion for often misdirected, political self-interest rather than a dialogue about race or social peace. Unfortunately, to both tenants of #ALM, your engagement will not frequently facilitate charitable discussion. Unless you have the utmost patience and almost specialized preparation, I would recommend focusing your attention on the second camp.
#alm, like its neighbor, also hosts two distinct groups of people. The first are victims of a logical trap hole. They believe #blacklivesmatter is a sentiment that prioritizes black lives as those that matter. It is a surprisingly common colloquial fallacy, and you may find yourself succumb to it in conversation among friends or in large social settings, like school.
Maybe one time your teacher held up a classmate’s project as an example for the room while everyone was working. “Excellent job, Elizabeth”, they may have said. Your next immediate thought might have been to think their compliment to Elizabeth meant that your own work was not excellent, especially if the teacher had already passed your desk! A natural response. That conclusion, however, is missing context. Yes, there is a chance your project in that moment fell comparatively short. Or maybe the teacher’s view of your work was obstructed as they walked by. Or your project just wasn’t as far along as Elizabeth’s. Or the teacher recognized they’d been neglecting Elizabeth during this class time, and took an opportunity to rectify that oversight. Whatever the case, the idea that “Elizabeth’s work is excellent” does not necessitate “My work is not excellent” or even “Only Elizabeth’s work is excellent.” Lucky for us, these kinds of rhetorical misunderstandings are generally benign.
Yet there is little benign about racial rhetoric in this country.
It’s weird to think that correcting a logical stumble en masse could actually save lives. What you need to figure out is how recipient such #alm tenants are to that correction. Don’t be afraid to adapt your engagement if the lower case letters start changing to all CAPS.
The second group, like the former, are just as ubiquitous. They believe speaking loudly about racial tension in any form further perpetuates racial division. Therefore, highlighting it in a hashtag, to them, is antithetical to social peace; in fact, it is needlessly inflammatory. The pursuit is almost noble, but ignores the unresolved reality of our country’s racially ignoble foundation. Like the prevalent issue with color-blind ideology, if people refuse to be mindful to the patterns of racial division, they are that much more likely to miss its effects. And being complicit to those effects is, in outcome, supporting them. You can characterize these #alm tenants as the same people who share that meme’d viral picture of the black woman wearing a t-shirt listing “black/white/all lives matter” hashtags, where at the end, the shirt calls for us to #stopthedivision. Although this group’s premises are fallacious, the aforementioned conclusion — to stop the division — is not inherently unreasonable. This is a good sign. It means that they can be engaged.
For those of you who have gotten this far, I’m already hearing your loudest thoughts. How simply reading positions like those described above tests your patience, hard. If even now you are struggling to adequately inform yourself, how on Earth, then, are you supposed to verbalize this stuff to others? And so many of your friends and family are this close to getting it. Why does it still take so much work? I hear you.
Now, keep going.
The black community is all too familiar with the difficulty of persuasion. Yet somehow we’ve trucked on for centuries.
Keep going.
The ability to communicate in a way that will change people’s hearts, that doesn’t force each side to dig their heels in; it can be painfully difficult. Can seem impossible. You want to help, but — no. No. You want to help, and…
you’ll keep going.
For us few BIPOC who still have the patience, and for you numerable abundant with racial privilege, the key to sustainable, communicative tenacity is sussing out who might actually listen. Remember the camps. #ALM are unlikely listeners. Engaging with them can be extremely taxing and critically unmanageable. As such, they are rarely worth your energy. #alm, on the other hand, carry a belief system that holds fundamental principles of social equality in high regard. The tenants just misunderstand how to communicate those principles on racial grounds without giving unconscious credence to explicit white supremacists. #alm doesn’t want to be racist, and their tenants certainly don’t want to help racists. Make them aware of the fact that their rhetoric is unintentionally arming the bad guys. Give them a chance to reevaluate. Give them a chance to fight alongside you.
The ability to communicate in a way that will change people’s hearts, that doesn’t force each side to dig their heels in; it can be painfully difficult. Can seem impossible. You want to help, but — no. No. You want to help, and…you’ll keep going.
But how exactly do we navigate that engagement? To what setting can we put our guns ablaze? If you’re black, frankly, I’m very tempted to recommend y’all just put up however you want, whenever you can. Because these arguments are crazy personal for us, the emotional fatigue here hits different. For black fighters with the capacity and everyone else, particularly non-BIPOC readers, I’m compiling a six-step guide for initiating discourse with #alm. I look forward to sharing it with you soon.
Until then, stay powerful.
