Why saying ‘all lives matter’ doesn’t help gain equality

One of the most prominent groups that has been showing up throughout the 2016 election trail is the Black Lives Matter movement. Many members of the group have shown up and shut down rallies for the various candidates. If we look back to August 9, 2015 we can see one of the first times that national news covered the take-over of a rally. On that day, three members of Black Lives Matter took over the stage from Bernie Sanders to commemorate the one year passing of Michael Brown in Ferguson.

The University of Iowa has also seen many protests from the movement. In November 2015 there was a rally to help show support for Ferguson the day after the grand jury decided not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting Brown.

Black lives matter protest on the pentacrest

Black Lives Matter began back in 2012 after 28 year-old George Zimmerman shot and killed 17 year-old Trayvon Martin after claiming he looked “suspicious”. The Martian case was not looked into very extensively and was eventually ruled as an act of self-defense. The release of Zimmerman caused public outcry, and that’s when Black Lives Matter was born.

The protest moved to the City Hall.

But with it, the All Lives Matter movement was also born. And the All Lives Matter movement is wrong.

When people say that “black lives matter”, there is more to it than just that statement. They are implying that black lives should matter too. When someone responds with “all lives matter”, that is them saying that they think “black lives matter” means only black lives matter, which is not the case.

Think of it this way, you are eating dinner with all of your friends and everyone is passing around the food family style. When the bowl gets to you it’s empty so you say “I deserve my share.” This is when the one friend who no one really likes says “we all deserve our share”, completely undermining your statement. You are implying that everyone should get their share, and that you deserve to be a part of everyone. But your rude friend just shut you down and now you didn’t solve anything. And you still have no food to eat.

The problem is when you say “I deserve my share” you were implying “too” at the end. “I deserve my share too, just like everybody at this table.” But your friends response made it seem like your statement meant “only I should get my fair share”, which clearly was not what you meant. As a result, his statement that “everyone should get their fair share,” while true, only served to ignore the problem you were trying to point out.

Woman protests the grand jury’s decision

That’s the situation of the Black Lives Matter movement. Everywhere we look, culture, laws, the arts, religion, everyone else repeatedly suggests that all lives should matter. Clearly, that message already is shown widely in our society.

We can see this in how the news repetitively ignores the death of young black men, but broadcasts much more of the deaths of middle age white women. We may see this because young black men are killed in HUGE disproportionate numbers compared to that of white women, which is why we don’t treat it as anything new. But the result is that, as a society, we don’t pay as much attention to certain people’s deaths as we do to others. Thus we don’t treat all lives as though they matter equally.

“Well it’s not that ‘all lives matter’ isn’t true, but it’s not helpful regarding the real problems that ‘black lives matter’ is trying to address,” said freshman Ryan Leparski, a Microbiology major.

“Saying ‘all lives matter’ overshadows the issues that African Americans are facing in our country.”

Protester downtown Iowa City