Do BLM or ALM?

[Col. Roosevelt]

Is it racist to say "All men are created equal" now too? Do we need to start saying "All Black men are created equal"?

Racist white slimeball.

[Figueira]

Nobody was saying "All Lives Matter" until it was as a response to "Black Lives Matter". Can you see how in that context, caterwauling about the intent of those saying "All Lives Matter" is more than a little disingenuous?

To be fair, I did hear "All Lives Matter" occasionally used as a misguided agreement with BLM, early on in the movement. When it's an angry response to BLM though, it's pretty clearly racist.

[Classic Conservative]

Every single life matters whether their black, Asian, Muslim, Jewish, Hispanic, Christian, LGBT, white etc. No one is above anyone but nobody matters less. Both Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman's lives matter. ALL LIVES MATTER.

[Adam Griffin]

bobloblaw be like

Kelly Thomas will be delighted to know that his life does not matter, or at least would be if he were still alive. I guess if he were a few shades darker and trying to grab his assailants' weapon his death would be a tragedy.

[Famous Mortimer]

Nobody was saying "All Lives Matter" until it was as a response to "Black Lives Matter". Can you see how in that context, caterwauling about the intent of those saying "All Lives Matter" is more than a little disingenuous?

Martin O'Malley and Hillary Clinton were caterwauling?

[Adam Griffin]

Nobody was saying "All Lives Matter" until it was as a response to "Black Lives Matter". Can you see how in that context, caterwauling about the intent of those saying "All Lives Matter" is more than a little disingenuous?

Martin O'Malley and Hillary Clinton were caterwauling?

For the general election, you betcha. Little did they know that the issue was going to get a lot more in-your-face and personal for them as a result; they've both since walked it back.

[Famous Mortimer]

You shouldn't have to walk back All Lives Matter. It's a perfectly reasonable statement.

[Penelope]

You shouldn't have to walk back All Lives Matter. It's a perfectly reasonable statement.

Sure. However, in the same context as, and especially in response to, the statement "Black Lives Matter" it is not 'reasonable'. It's a perfectly reasonable assertion to say that all lives matter in general. Nobody is going to disagree with that. When you put capital letters on it and dress it up as a response to a movement meant to highlight the inherent inequality and injustice in our society, it's an extremely dismissive and ignorant statement.

[Mercenary]

They came up with a bad name which causes the point of the movement to be lost on people.
The idea behind the movement is good but like most movements it has been poorly executed.

[Adam Griffin]

You shouldn't have to walk back All Lives Matter. It's a perfectly reasonable statement.

Irrespective of the fact that it's absolutely not, your original point remains invalid because you were trying to legitimize it because some Democrats used it. They've since abandoned it and apologized for it, so the point isn't one any longer.

[YaBoyNY]

It's really revolting how many people (read: out of touch white people) think that by saying "Black Lives Matter" you're somehow implying that only black lives matter.

It's sort of like, if during the Holocaust, somebody said "Jewish Lives Matter" only to be told "Yes, but All Lives Matter too! What about the non-Jewish Germans?"

[RINO Tom]

When the phrase "Black Lives Matter" is uttered, what is really being said is "Black Lives Matter, Too". The failure for them to make that critical distinction has certainly hurt their image - that black lives have as much value as white lives, or any other lives in general - but in their defense, most of the bitter cretins complaining about it in the first place would have just found some other angle to deflect to had that been the case in the first place.

Seriously.

[Making America Great Again]

All lives matter. Black lives matter is mostly a rallying cry to kill police officers and riot.

[wolfsblood07]

Black Lives Matter. Anyone who tries to argue "WLM" is ignorant and needs to learn a lesson on social justice.

Are you serious?  At the very least, all lives matter.  To get upset about somebody including whites in that statement is pure liberal conceit.  And it's why nobody likes listening to liberal talk shows! 
When Bernie Sanders stubbornly said black lives matter, I knew he was a total buffoon.

[Storebought]

"All Lives Matter" is a prime example of the dishonest debating tactic called appeal to relative privation, also known as whataboutery.

[DavidB.]

I have to say Adam Griffin's posts (except for the rant on white Europeans, which simply stems from a lack of understanding of the difference between multiculturalism in settler nations and historical nation-states) in this thread are so good that they convinced me of the stupidity of "All Lives Matter". Which, of course, is not to say that not all lives matter. Apart from his posts, the rainforest tweet and the burning house cartoon are spot on.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Nobody was saying "All Lives Matter" until it was as a response to "Black Lives Matter". Can you see how in that context, caterwauling about the intent of those saying "All Lives Matter" is more than a little disingenuous?

Martin O'Malley and Hillary Clinton were caterwauling?

can you imagine if they were literally caterwauling?  That would be hilarious...

[DavidB.]

At the same time I do find it striking that many people who think that BLM (for good reasons) are the ones who were complaining about people having a French flag avatar after the Bataclan attacks, supposedly not caring about what's happening in Lebanon, Nigeria, etc. Of course, showing one's solidarity with people in France does not mean one doesn't care about other tragedies; people should be consequent.

(of course, the ALM + French flag crowd is just as inconsequent, but they weren't as obnoxious in the French case.)

[Bojack Horseman]

"All lives matter" is a clever way of taking race out of a race issue, in the same way that screaming "mental health" is a clever way of taking guns out of a gun issue.

[bedstuy]

The funny thing is that both sides of this debate, whether we say "All lives matter," or "Black lives matter," we can agree on one thing, black lives don't matter.  Because, regardless of what you say you believe, actions speak louder than words.  Our society acts like black lives don't matter, including liberals, including black people, we're all guilty of that.

The black lives matter movement is purely interested in black lives if they were ended by police or white people.  It's about the problem of white people killing black people and police killing black people, it explicitly is not about black lives.  And, it's not even about black people being unjustly killed by police because they champion people like Michael Brown and Kimani Gray. 

It is true that there is a problem of police misconduct, police racism and profiling.  But, I think anyone who cares about black lives needs to acknowledge that problem pales in comparison to the underlying social and cultural decay in black communities that leads blacks to commit crimes at a far higher rate.  And, you can't understand the different experience of blacks and whites with police purely from a racial perspective. 

I live in New York City.  Whites are 45% of the population and commit 1% of the shootings.  Blacks are 25% and commit 75% of the shootings.  If you ignore those kinds of statistics in comparing the experience of blacks and whites with police, you're putting your head in the sand.  And, that goes back to the black lives don't matter point.  In NYC, whites are 3% of the murder victims while blacks are 62%.  Nobody in the left-wing or right-wing cares because those dead black people can't fuel a black  victimhood or "white people are evil" narrative.

[°Leprechaun]

I know that this may sound trite and corny, but at least that  is better than quibbling over mere words too much. We are one race, not several. We are the human race. That is the point.
We can live in harmony if not unity, there is only a nuance of a difference but perhaps it is a meaningfull nuance. To say "Black lives matter" is saying that we shouldn't be racist, because we are all one race. All life matters, human life has always come before other life (animal life), but that is part of our animal survival instinct. When any death occurs there is a big black hole in the soul, because we know that every person matters. I know that death is a great tragedy because I have experienced loss. The quandry is that death is part of life and to say that life is
suffering is due, ironically, partly to the fact that loss causes great suffering. This may sound off topic because it doesn't address the issue directly, but actually I think that it does, because racism is the underlying problem. Racism is seeing someone as "other" and although we are different, we are also very much the same. I hope that this doesn't sound too corny.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

But, I think anyone who cares about black lives needs to acknowledge that problem pales in comparison to the underlying social and cultural decay in black communities that leads blacks to commit crimes at a far higher rate. 

Gee, it's almost like if you were to look behind the curtain of BLM and were listening to black people and what they have to say directly, you would find them discussing this exact thing in-depth.

As they have been for 35+ years.

[bedstuy]

But, I think anyone who cares about black lives needs to acknowledge that problem pales in comparison to the underlying social and cultural decay in black communities that leads blacks to commit crimes at a far higher rate. 

Gee, it's almost like if you were to look behind the curtain of BLM and were listening to black people and what they have to say directly, you would find them discussing this exact thing in-depth.

As they have been for 35+ years.

Fair point.  I think a lot of the BLM people are "leftist activist" agitators who want to speak for black people, but don't represent anyone.  I'm generalizing somewhat to be sure and I'll bet there are people within the BLM umbrella who aren't as bad as the image.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

But, I think anyone who cares about black lives needs to acknowledge that problem pales in comparison to the underlying social and cultural decay in black communities that leads blacks to commit crimes at a far higher rate. 

Gee, it's almost like if you were to look behind the curtain of BLM and were listening to black people and what they have to say directly, you would find them discussing this exact thing in-depth.

As they have been for 35+ years.

Fair point.  I think a lot of the BLM people are "leftist activist" agitators who want to speak for black people, but don't represent anyone.  I'm generalizing somewhat to be sure and I'll bet there are people within the BLM umbrella who aren't as bad as the image.

This would be news to black people, 86% of whom believe more needs to be done to give blacks equal rights (and now 53% of whites do, up from just 39% in 2014). Or the 66% of blacks who say that they only sometimes, rarely, or never trust the police to do right by them. The 83% who say blacks and minorities still face discrimination, the 57% who say the police need more oversight, or the 51% who say BLM movement is supporting reforms to ensure everyone is treated equally.

Black Lives Matter was not born out of a bunch of lefty internet agitators who need a new cause to champion; it has been born out of decades of continued poor treatment of minorities, especially black people.

You are buying into this conservative white Republican mentality that anytime minorities, whether they be black or brown or Muslim, stand up and say "We are being treated unfairly by people who are supposed to be the ones upholding a fair and just society", that we need to smack them down and talk about deflect to things like problems within those communities.

You can address problems of police brutality while also addressing problems within those communities. That's what BLM is pushing beyond the police brutality narrative.

[MK]

But, I think anyone who cares about black lives needs to acknowledge that problem pales in comparison to the underlying social and cultural decay in black communities that leads blacks to commit crimes at a far higher rate. 

Gee, it's almost like if you were to look behind the curtain of BLM and were listening to black people and what they have to say directly, you would find them discussing this exact thing in-depth.

As they have been for 35+ years.

Fair point.  I think a lot of the BLM people are "leftist activist" agitators who want to speak for black people, but don't represent anyone.  I'm generalizing somewhat to be sure and I'll bet there are people within the BLM umbrella who aren't as bad as the image.

This would be news to black people, 86% of whom believe more needs to be done to give blacks equal rights (and now 53% of whites do, up from just 39% in 2014). Or the 66% of blacks who say that they only sometimes, rarely, or never trust the police to do right by them. The 83% who say blacks and minorities still face discrimination, the 57% who say the police need more oversight, or the 51% who say BLM movement is supporting reforms to ensure everyone is treated equally.

Black Lives Matter was not born out of a bunch of lefty internet agitators who need a new cause to champion; it has been born out of decades of continued poor treatment of minorities, especially black people.

You are buying into this conservative white Republican mentality that anytime minorities, whether they be black or brown or Muslim, stand up and say "We are being treated unfairly by people who are supposed to be the ones upholding a fair and just society", that we need to smack them down and talk about deflect to things like problems within those communities.

You can address problems of police brutality while also addressing problems within those communities. That's what BLM is pushing beyond the police brutality narrative.

Complete liberal nonsense.     Blacks have issues that reach wayyyyy beyond police departments which in them selves dont make laws. They only enforce what your local and state heads come up with and supposed voters. 

Yes, blacks are feed up with getting the dirty end of the stick and now its liberals like you who hoodwick them into blaming a boogeyman ... police forces.     Because if they ever figured it out(which they wont) they takes away a group of people you have exerted power over.