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Comment by DiabloD3 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure you didn't mean it as such, but don't all lives actually matter?

Of course all lives matter. But if racial identities were homes, there are a few on fire in the United States and it doesn't make much sense to call the fire department for every house when a few urgently need the attention more. Is that fair?

Let's word this a different way.

If 6 black people's homes were on fire, and 4 white people's homes were on fire, wouldn't it make more sense to send firefighters to all the houses?

It should be recognised that having a violent interaction with police in America occurs more often than every other first world country regardless if your black or white.

They don't matter equally. Should they matter equally? Yes. Saying all lives matter obfuscates that they don't matter equally.

You're assuming that they don't matter equally. That may be true, but it's dangerous to start off by simply assuming the validity of your thesis.

Moreover, it assumes that the way in which they don't matter equally is based only on racial lines. I'm far from convinced that's completely true. It appears that's some of it, but the fact is that police kill lots of innocent whites, hispanics, and asians as well. That being the case, wouldn't it make more sense to look more broadly at where the disparities are, rather than simply assuming that it's all racial while refusing to entertain any other possibility?

They do, but "All Lives Matter" is a purposeful and pernicious misunderstanding of what "Black Lives Matter" means, which is something along the lines of (quoted from a law professor[1], and I think it could be a little better-turned but you'll get the idea):

Because of the brutalizing and killing of black people at the hands of the police and the indifference of society in general and the criminal justice system in particular, it is important that we say that Black Lives Matter.

This is, of course, too long to fit on a T-shirt. One might wish that they'd gone with "Black Lives Matter, Too", but that isn't as rhetorically strong and smacks of me-tooism, of begging to be treated like humans rather than asserting humanity. Either way, "All Lives Matter" is at its heart a racist dog-whistle precisely because it attempts to diminish the current, very active threat caused to black communities by the police and the justice systems that should exist to help them (instead of exist to maintain a profoundly racist status quo). If you are not on board with this, I would advise not using the phrase.

[1] - http://imgur.com/a/YkDVQ

Re: the attached album - I'd like to write a followup letter to that professor concerning his/her use of Avante Garde as a body font.

Grandparent comment was concerned because they have a black child. Generally speaking, I get pissed off at most SJW BS. These days, however, I genuinely fear for my black friends, while as a white male I've never had that fear (and yes I've had more police interaction than I should have, so no ivory tower here...) The use of "all lives" and "human" when addressing these very real concerns is usually a way of snidely disregarding these concerns; "black lives matter" isn't some racist grouping of words, but has a very specific meaning.

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