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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"Black lives matter" and "Eat your vegetables"
You may think I'm nuts for pairing those two statements, but here goes.
When blacks are disproportionately killed by cops and white supremacists and vigilantes, some protest "Black lives matter." Others respond, "All lives matter." Now the truth is that the members of "all" who are not black are not being disproportionately killed. All the non-black lives are already being considered to matter to those doing the killing.
You've probably heard a parent (or been one) who says to a child, "Eat your vegetables." Now the reason for saying that is that the child won't eat the vegetables. The kid already ate the meat, the potatoes, the gravy, the milk, and the dessert. It's only the vegetables that the kid won't eat. The only foods being disproportionately dissed by the kid are the vegetables. When someone says to the kid, "Eat your vegetables," no one ever protests that all foods matter and that you shouldn't say "Eat your vegetables;" you should say, "Eat all your foods. All foods matter."
There's no reason for the parent to tell the kid to eat the things he's already eating, and saying to the kid, "All foods matter" would be stupid and useless. Anyone who protests that "All lives matter" should never, ever say to a kid, "Eat your vegetables."
arcane1
(38,613 posts)treestar
(82,383 posts)the white lives are already presumed to matter.
Daninmo
(119 posts)If you are talking to children who need an adult to look out for them you could use this logic. Otherwise wouldn't you find this condescending?
Igel
(35,191 posts)There's no contradiction there.
Jimmy, you haven't eaten your vegetables. Eat your vegetables.
Jimmy, you haven't eaten your vegetables. Eat all your food.
Or, my parents' variation,
Jimmy, you haven't eaten your vegetables. Clean your plate.
Nobody's going to say, "No, he has to eat his vegetables."
There's a difference in focus, but nothing's been denied.
The following response sequence is met with outrage:
Black lives matter.
All lives matter.
Perhaps it's the loss of emphasis, which must be more extreme than in the vegetables instance. Perhaps it's the consequent loss of the spotlight, because it makes the cause into part of a larger whole and diminishes the uniqueness, sort of a cry for attention. Perhaps it's just a claim, "You're not noticing what's up and we think you have to." Which is offensive if people have noticed. Dunno. It's likely different for different people. Silence in an utterance is like that--different people fill things in differently, but invariably a person assumes everybody's just like him (or her).
Explicitness is good. Some linguistic codes really avoid being explicit, however.