‘All Lives Matter’? Sigh.

This back and forth between “Black Lives Matter” and “All Lives Matter” puzzles me. It is everywhere in comment threads all over the web, but these statements are not at all congruent.  ‘All Lives Matter’ is a banal truism, a first-order motherhood statement, too broad to generate any action or advocacy. Can you seriously envision people marching in the streets carrying signs saying “murder is bad!” Who are we kidding here! Spectators would titter and yawn and go back to watching the Bachelorette. To broaden a problem to this degree is to castrate it from the perspective of meaningful action that real people could imagine taking.

“Black Lives Matter” is a call to action slogan designed to generate pressure for a specific program of reform aimed at police training and racial biases that are obviously real. It is not about trying to create heaven on earth or reshaping human nature. Some of the people who mouth the platitude ‘all lives matter’ are no doubt, well-meaning souls who have just not thought this through. Others are cynics who know exactly what they are doing  — using a broad statement with no actionable content to trivialize an advocacy that might really spur change.

So, Black Lives Matter. Too often, for too many, they haven’t, they don’t. It’s past time that changes.