White People: When you say "All Lives Matter"

I should have posted about #blacklivesmatter much sooner.

I've been reading the articles, following the social media threads, trying to understand the movement, and overall attempting, though not as much as I should, to amplify the voices of my African-American friends.

In the process, I have had a few people post on my social media feed that I should be saying "all lives matter," not "Black lives matter."

It was jarring. Especially the day that I posted that Black lives matter because there had been two shootings of black men by police officers it in the 24 hours, and I wanted my Black friends to know that someone cares. Especially because there seems to be a lot of anger and resentment and almost hatred toward the Black community for even saying that there was an injustice.

But here's the really disturbing thing I realized: when White people say "all lives matter" in response to "Black lives matter," they're NOT actually encompassing Black lives in that statement, no matter how much they think they are. If they were including Black lives, they wouldn't really need to say it because no one else said that White lives DON'T matter (there are lots and lots of articles explaining this - I don't need to add to them). What "all lives matter"  really says is, "no, you're wrong. I'm correcting you.

Black lives don't matter. All lives matter. All lives except Black lives matter."

This insistence on correction, on steamrolling, results in an attempt to replace reality. It's as though White people are saying, "black people don't know what they're talking about. They are unqualified to make statements like this. Let me fix this for them and tell them what they really think, what they really feel, what they really know about an issue that primarily affects them."

And the really sad part about all of this is that I am confident that when I post this to social media, the comments thread will continue to do this. It will say things like "no, you really aren't understanding me. Blacks really are wrong, and so are you. Let me just explain 'all lives matter' to you one more time, slowly, and you will see that I am correct and you were wrong." And the implicit result is that it's wrong that Black lives matter.

I haven't posted because I had the luxury not to debate this, just as straight people have the privilege of not justifying their marriages over and over. But White people, we need to do better. We need to think harder. We need to acknowledge that we don't know everything, and especially on this, we don't know more than the Black community.

Black lives matter.