Why protest "all lives matter?" Do you disagree with that statement?
You had a good post, but I just wanted to single out this one part, as I'd been thinking specifically about it.
The problem with "All lives matter" isn't that it's not true, or that the BLM people don't believe it. It's that answering "Black lives matter" with "all lives matter" comes across like a glib attempt to co-opt the issue, and to subtly cast aspersions on the people who weren't saying it in the first place. The reason people felt the need to say "Black lives matter" in the first place is that society has seemed to have policies that indicate black lives matter less than other types of lives.
It's the same as if you say rather than feminism, we should have humanism. All well and good and kumbayah-ish, but it feels like an attempt to distract that there are very real inequities between men and women that deserve to be called out separately, and not just lumped into the human condition.
This. Saying "All lives matter!" to a BLM activist is like going up to someone trying to raise money to cure cancer and saying "all diseases are bad!"
