Black Lives Matter Does Not Equal All Lives
By Linda Chavers,
March 3, 2015 Recently I was scheduled to give a talk on #BlackLivesMatter at my sister’s school.
It was cancelled due to weather, but evidently, it was cancelled in another way, too. Shortly before the cancellation, when I was still drafting my talk, my sister posted the following update to Facebook: “To whoever crossed out black lives matter and wrote in all lives matter. Thank you.
Thank you for devaluing the lives lost in the name of racism and bigotry, thank you for likening your struggles to my constant and prevailing fear of being killed for the color of my skin. Thank you so much for devaluing every single struggle black people have faced just to show you matter too.”
And there it is. That very crossing out is exactly what #BlackLivesMatter is about. Because to say that we exist, that we are full-fledged human beings – somehow that confirmation is an affront. How this came to be is much too much to even begin to fully address. Just know that whiteness has always been an identity of antagonism — of crossing out others in order to exist. Before the Civil War it was the Italians and any other immigrants that whiteness was set against. During and after the war, whiteness came into its own. This development just so happened to coincide with the emancipation of enslaved black people. December 6, 1865 was the day the states ratified the 13th Amendment. That was a Wednesday.
Just know that whiteness has always been an identity of antagonism.
When you think of that, of the psychological manifestations and transformations that took place just because of the passing of time, it’s not that difficult to understand why someone sees the phrase BLACK LIVES MATTER and crosses it out with ALL LIVES. Our nation’s very fabric is threaded with these knots — knots that are fraught with tensions; tensions that feed into our interactions and language. #BlackLivesMatter is about saying out loud what usually has to go unspoken. Look what happens when we affirm our humanity. It’s crossed out, it is suppressed. It is called oppressive. Just let that sit for a moment. It is considered oppressive if I, a black person, say or do anything that acknowledges my blackness.
I have to explain that what was regarded no better than a piece of furniture (at best) on a Tuesday was pronounced as being legally human on a Wednesday.
It’s overwhelming to try and talk or write about this issue – relentlessly so. Because it’s never really just talking or writing, it’s explaining, over and over again: I have to explain what is wrong here. I have to explain what is wrong with black men getting fatally shot when they are unarmed. I have to explain why this is problematic. I have to explain why this is not new, and I have to explain why it’s the not being new that is the problem. I have to explain that what was regarded no better than a piece of furniture (at best) on a Tuesday was pronounced as being legally human on a Wednesday.
I have to explain the Fugitive Slave Act, Black Codes, the birth of the Ku Klux Klan and town militias. I have to explain that lynching was not just a body hanging from a rope. I have to explain that whatever was hanging from a rope was what was left over after the cutting and the burning, after body parts like ears and penises were ripped off and sealed in jars to be displayed on mantels as family heirlooms. I have to explain that to exercise one’s right to vote was suicidal.
I have to explain all of this just so that the people who cross out Black Lives Matter and replace it with All Lives Matter understand how this hurts us, hurts our Black lives. It seems like a simple gesture, the crossing out of words, but for those of us trying to embody our value as human beings, it feels like a renaissance of removal.
Linda Chavers is a writer and teacher in Exeter, New Hampshire. Her big loves are reality television, novels, and William Faulkner. She tweets at @contrarynegress.
