All Lives, Black Lives
Don’t be seduced by a false choice
I work in the field of international human rights, with a focus on issues of identity and discrimination, including global racism. Nearly all of the work I do is based outside the United States, but here, I turn my lens toward home. Obtaining social justice requires us not only to fight the good fight, but to fight the right fight. Right now, we’re just fighting, and nothing good or right will come from it.
I spent the better part of an afternoon pouring through videos and articles and rants and raves on race relations and social justice in America. As you can probably imagine, it made for a very depressing and draining afternoon. One of the things I came across over and over again in the various exchanges I encountered was the increasingly bitter feud between those who support BlackLivesMatter and those who support AllLivesMatter. Site after site, article after article, rant after rant, video after video seemed almost giddy with delight over posting what they thought was the “perfect” response to those who advocate AllLivesMatter.
The general consensus, based upon everything I read and watched, seemed to be that AllLivesMatter was an effort to suppress, reject, or undermine BlackLivesMatter. Anyone fighting for social justice, especially for the black community in America, therefore had to resist efforts to promote AllLivesMatter. Some sites went so far as to claim that AllLivesMatter was racist, an act of violence against the black community, which led to the apparent conclusion that if you are opposed to racism, you must also be opposed to AllLivesMatter.
As a human rights practitioner who focuses on racism and discrimination around the world, I found this whole debate quite baffling. The last thing we need right now is more ignorance, which seemed to be out in full digital force in every corner of cyberspace. AllLivesMatter and BlackLivesMatter are not opposed to each other, and it gravely undermines the struggle for social justice to think that they are. Not only do you not have to choose between the two, as if they were mutually exclusive ideas, but also, and more importantly, you actually can’t support one without also supporting the other. As it turns out, they’re inseparable.
Making a difference
While AllLivesMatter and BlackLivesMatter may be inseparable, that doesn’t mean they are the same thing. They do have a few important differences.
AllLivesMatter is a movement of non-discrimination. The principle of non-discrimination is actually a fundamental pillar of human rights, so to dismiss AllLivesMatter is also to dismiss human rights, which is not something you want to dismiss in a fight for social justice. The principle of non-discrimination does not say, as so many people seem to think, that we should care equally about all people in all situations, regardless of context. What it says is that when action is required, or assistance is needed, we must care equally for all of those in need without discrimination. If a country offers free health care, for instance, it can certainly differentiate the sick from the healthy, and can even differentiate citizen from non-citizen. Neither of those is considered discrimination from a human rights standpoint. But what that country cannot do is offer free health care to some groups but deny it to others, based solely on specific elements of their identity. That would be discrimination.
BlackLivesMatter, by contrast, is a movement of prioritization. It says that right now, the various crises that affect the black community in the United States require our undivided attention and should also receive first priority. Hands down, the most common refrain I came across in my afternoon of browsing was the question, “How can #AllLivesMatter until #BlackLivesMatter?” (or some variation thereof). What this really comes down to is the question of triage, a term borrowed from the medical profession that refers to the prioritization of patients based on the severity of their injuries. From a human rights perspective, triage is not considered an act of discrimination, so on that front, BlackLivesMatter is certainly an acceptable perspective to advocate.
Where BlackLivesMatter stumbles, however, is in its insistence on absolute prioritization. If you think of a hospital emergency room, where ten people show up all at the same time, the medical staff can certainly prioritize those who need medical assistance right away — those with life-threatening injuries, for instance — over those whose injuries and ailments are less severe. What they cannot do is treat only those with life-threatening injuries — they can prioritize, but they still must care for all ten people because all ten have a right to equal consideration and care. The most severely injured can get higher priority (BlackLivesMatter), but they cannot have absolute priority — all those who need medical help have a right to receive it (AllLivesMatter).
Working through an example
In order to illustrate my point, I will use the most common example I came across of what is supposed to be the perfect reply to anyone advocating an AllLivesMatter perspective. On no fewer than fifty different websites did I find this presented as the ultimate refutation of why the AllLivesMatter viewpoint is completely wrong — game over, argument won, go home. I’ve added the example, a cartoon actually, and then in what follows I’ll explain why it does not show what people think it shows.
The first frame is a complete misrepresentation of the issue as an either/or choice. AllLivesMatter is not a negative retort to BlackLivesMatter, as if to say, “Are you saying your black life is more important than mine?” AllLivesMatter is positive complement saying that all lives deserve equal value and consideration, so a black life should matter as much as my life or any other life. If there is a discrepancy, then there is certainly a problem. In that sense, any person advocating an AllLivesMatter perspective must necessarily support a BlackLivesMatter perspective as well. They move in the same direction — each supports the other.
The second frame is a complete misrepresentation of what non-discrimination is. Non-discrimination does not say that we give exactly the same consideration to everything and everyone at all times, regardless of context. It says that when action is required or assistance is needed, we must perform such action or render such assistance to all who are in need without discrimination. As with my example of triage above, differentiating between those who are in urgent need of assistance and those who are not does not violate the principle of non-discrimination.
The third frame shows why this issue is presented as a false choice. A house on fire and a house that is not are not the same thing, and only a complete idiot would think they deserve equal consideration. That is not what an AllLivesMatter perspective advocates — not even close. We can and must differentiate between a house that is on fire and one that is not, clearly the house on fire is the one in need of assistance, and so we rightfully prioritize the house on fire. Non-discrimination does not say that the house that is not on fire deserves equal care and consideration. What non-discrimination says is that we must render assistance to the house that is on fire regardless of whose house it is.
So the cartoon presents not a perfect response, but a perfect display of ignorance in action, a complete misrepresentation of the issue. A better version would add a fourth frame, where we see that there are many houses on fire. If we accept the premise of the cartoon that the burning house represents the black community, what would we do in a situation where the black house was on fire, but so, too, were the Latino house, the LGBTQ house, the Asian house, the women’s house, and so forth? If we accept the BlackLivesMatter perspective, and reject that of AllLivesMatter, then our only concern would be the black house, and we would leave all the other houses to burn to the ground.
Fight the good fight, not the wrong fight
How sad is it that two movements that ask us to care more for others have somehow managed to make us fight with each other instead? AllLivesMatter and BlackLivesMatter are not mutually exclusive movements, and one is not a refutation or a denial of the other. They move in the same direction and they are fundamentally inseparable — there is really no way to support one without also supporting the other.
Consider this hypothetical situation: If a black man is driving home and sees a severely injured Latina on the side of the road, should he stop to help? If we accept the premise that all lives cannot matter until black lives matter, then he would drive past and leave the Latina to die. He’ll only stop if he sees a black life in trouble, because black lives matter and that should be our only priority right now. However, If we instead accept the premise that black lives matter because all lives matter, then he will stop to help. In stopping to render help, he does not in that moment stop caring about black people. Nor is he saying, as so many people have inanely suggested, that the lives of uninjured people somehow don’t matter or matter less than the lives of those who are injured.
Don’t be fooled — there’s no choice to be made here. It’s a disgrace that we are fighting over things like how much empathy and compassion we should have and to whom we should give it. If we do this right, there should be plenty of empathy and compassion to go around. Wherever there’s a house on fire, I’ll be there to help. Hope to see you there, too.
