When people say “Black Lives Matter” it does not mean that “Only Black Lives Matter.” Such an interpretation is grossly misleading, creating a scarecrow argument in order to discredit the issue. Nobody, typically, is saying or implying this.
Of course, all lives matter indeed. Who would disagree with that! Nobody calling for Black lives to matter (or, with regards to other movements, Native lives, or Latinx lives, Asian lives, LGBTQ lives, even Blue lives) excludes the call to respect and protect the lives of every single human being. But we need to focus on Black lives for a good reason.
“Black Lives Matter” means that there has been insufficient attention and care paid to the Black community. Black people – for various reasons – have historically and presently been treated as expendable, as “less than” other people. Everybody probably knows this. If you seriously claim not to know, it should not take much to read up on history.
Denial of history (such as Holocaust Denial, or the denial of racism) is not acceptable. We do need to educate ourselves about historical and present injustice always. We need to stop the pretense that we can afford not to acknowledge historical responsibility in order to make the future better. It is part of the social contract of every country to know about its darkness and pursue the light. America may well have done better than most countries in that respect, even though it is not yet perfect. At least we have been talking about it for quite a while. Racism is not an American domain either and can be found in every single country on the planet, sadly.
Simply calling out that “Black Lives Matter” means to call out to stop the outrageous and racist treatment of Black people. Nothing else. Nothing sinister. Nothing objectionable.
We are all human, we all matter, but when it comes to minorities such as – in this case – Black people, that realization has not set in universally. That’s why we need to pay special attention now and remind everyone – globally – that Black lives matter just as much as those of everyone else. Nothing else. Is that too much to ask?
Notwithstanding that, we can of course disagree about the steps that need to be taken about this matter. Violence, of course, is not a solution, neither is weakening the legal protections for every single person in the country against free speech, against crime and suffering, neither is discrediting the need for vigorous and civil debate, neither is disregarding Public Health measures in times of a global pandemic.
There are no easy fixes for the problem, otherwise it would have been fixed already. Let a national debate happen about the best solutions, but do not let any agitators – well-intentioned or not – dominate the discourse and mandate pretend fixes which will do nothing to solve the actual problem, namely the presence of racism and thinking in racial terms. We need to be united in this.
But the first step to solving the problem addressed by the legitimate (i.e. truly peaceful) protestors is to recognize that indeed, Black lives do matter.
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