To all my friends asking why can’t it be “All Lives Matter”

You want our world to be color-blind. I get it. You want us to see the humanity in each other, and that skin color is just one facet of a whole human being. I get it. But every single time you advocate for All Lives Matter, all your good intentions for being color-blind perpetuates racism.

Why?

Because we don’t live in a color-blind world. Race is a social construct, and every day people of color have to live their lives under the explicit and implicit prejudices that come from this social construct.

To say, “we’re all one” or “why can’t we all get along” skips over a HUGE part of a person of color’s life experience. You’re trying to skip to the end of the story without hearing or understanding what it is like to live right here right now in a society defined and shaped through the eyes of white people.

You have the privilege of looking through a set of lenses that were custom made for you. You’re not looking at the world through the lenses that were forced onto you and to the people who came before you, brought here on boats as property for the people who purchased them from a far off shore.

Black Lives Matter needs to stand on its own. We need to use that statement to humble ourselves and realize our lenses to the world may look clear but are actually tinted with the color white. We need to listen. We need to educate ourselves and — in all the ways we can — look through the lenses our African-American friends and loved ones wear. And while we can and should do this for our Latino, Asian, Native American and Middle Eastern friends and loved ones, too, we have to pay particular attention to the African-American experience in America because our roots here are deeply intertwined given our country was founded on slavery.

So, stand up for all lives by embracing rather than questioning Black Lives Matter. Only when we take the time to acknowledge what is can we then truly transform our world into what we would like.