Unsurprisingly, I guess, the backlash continues to grow. Well lots of (interconnected) backlash, actually. Here though, I am going to talk specifically about the backlash to the words “Black Lives Matter,” a backlash that comes in the form of the responding pronouncement “All Lives Matter” (or “Blue Lives Matter” or other similar responses). I am reading and hearing this backlash on social media, in mainstream media, and out and about in daily life. I keep wondering when it will peter out to ultimately just a few muttering it to each other. We’re not there yet, not even close, that’s for sure.
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Before I talk specifically about the importance of those specific “three little words,” Black Lives Matter, I want to follow a tangent into the word “backlash.”
From Merriam-Webster.com:
“Full Definition of backlash
1a : a sudden violent backward movement or reaction
b : the play between adjacent movable parts (as in a series of gears);
also : the jar caused by this when the parts are put into action
2: a snarl in that part of a fishing line wound on the reel
3: a strong adverse reaction (as to a recent political or social development)”
Even though the above is the definition, I wonder at the derivation of the word.
I want to say that the irony should not be lost on us that, in the particular case of the “backlash” of using “All Lives Matter” as a retort to “Black Lives Matter” (whether when to the Black Lives Matter-named movement organizers all over or to the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag online or to signs/banners/etc. out in the world or to any other manifestation), the hurling of the retort is a current day public spectacle of a lash applied to the collective and individual back(s) of Black people. In other words “All Lives Matter” functions as a rhetorical lash, communicating to Black/of African descent people, that they’d better shut up and know their place.
I am not a rhetorician. I know a few of them though; maybe one or more of them will weigh in on this.
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So, here’s what I would like to offer about those specific three little words, “Black Lives Matter.” I offer this thought especially to those of you saying “All Lives Matter” and saying it in response to “Black Lives Matter.”
(SIDE NOTE: If you are someone who has been saying the mantra “All Lives Matter on a daily basis your whole life and it’s pure accident that others have now picked it up as a retort, this note is not for you. I will say, though, that, while that coincidence sucks for you --and reminds me a wee bit of how my dad named our family’s chocolate lab “Buddy” about three weeks before the Clintons did the same back in the day-- I encourage you not to take a stubborn stand on this one and instead, find some new language for your long-loved daily mantra.)
Back to the matter at hand. Here is the offering, the clarification, the grammatical Come-To-Jesus for those of you using “All Lives Matter” as a retort to “Black Lives Matter.”
YOU MISSED THE “TOO.”
There is an implied “too” at the end of “Black Lives Matter,” as in “Black Lives Matter Too.” It’s the “too” that is implied. There is no “only” implied. There is no “more” implied. There is no “in contrast to other lives” implied. There is no “over white lives” implied. There is no “for fuck’s sake!” implied. (Well, yeah, speaking for myself, that last one is implied.)
So, *since* there is an implied too, when you say “All Lives Matter” as a retort to “Black Lives Matter,” it’s like you’re saying Black lives don’t matter too. It’s like your saying the lives of Black people - Black people themselves- are less-than. It’s like this because you are ignoring the implied “too.” The implied “too” is a built-in acknowledgement that all lives should matter *and* a call for action for us to ensure that all lives *DO* matter to everyone by working to make sure that individuals and institutions (read: the police) have Black lives on their lists of lives that matter.
Get it.
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