How #AllLivesMatter Undercuts #BlackLivesMatter
Because statistics show that actually, in this country, all lives don’t.
I wrote an article the other day about how the national protests surrounding the deaths of young black men at the hands of police make you realize how racist your Facebook friends are.
I got a lot of hate mail for it. The most prevalent counter-argument (if you can call “you’re a dumb [expletive]’’ an argument) is that I am a horrible person for thinking that using the hashtag #AllLivesMatter makes someone racist.
So here’s the deal.
When said alone, “all lives matter’’ is fine. Of course all lives matter. That should be a given. But #AllLivesMatter minimizes the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Because statistically, some lives are more threatened than others.
A ProPublica report found that from 2010 to 2012, black men between the ages of 15 and 19 were killed by police at a rate of 31.17 per million, while white men in the same age range were killed at a rate of 1.47 per million.
The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter arose because of these statistics, which have recently been illustrated by the deaths of Freddie Gray, Mike Brown, and Eric Garner (to name but a few).
Systematic racism doesn’t just extend to who lives and who dies: It permeates all aspects of our society. As this videoVox recently posted shows, black men are incarcerated at six times the rate white men are. Black drivers are twice as likely as white drivers to be pulled over. When two identical resumes, one with a white-sounding name and one with a black-sounding name, were submitted for a job opening, the white-sounding applicant was 50 percent more likely to be called back. Black people are charged, on average, $700 more when buying a car.
The numbers make it clear that white lives, in this country, are valued more highly.
Someone once told me, “If you have to say it, it isn’t true.’’ We don’t have to say #AllLivesMatter because it’s true. We do have to say #BlackLivesMatter, because statistically, we keep acting like black lives matter less.
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