Black Lives Matter

To me, it’s self evident: black lives matter.  I don’t have any trouble saying it, or writing it.  Black lives matter.  And I mean it: black lives matter.  I don’t understand why so many have a problem with those three words, because saying that black lives matter in no way means that other lives don’t, or they matter less than black lives. It isn’t putting relative values on lives. Black lives matter. White lives matter.  All lives matter.  These statements are all true. It isn’t either/or.

But you don’t really have to say that white lives matter, or that male lives matter, or that cop lives matter, or that rich lives matter.  All those are understood.  In American society they are truisms, so obvious that it’s odd to even write them down.  Black lives matter, though, for many people seems to be  something different entirely.

Here’s a test to see if you are a racist.  Can you say black lives matter.  Just that, with no qualifiers.  No “Black lives matter, but no more than white lives.”  No “Black lives matter, but all lives matter.”   If you can’t say black lives matter and stop there, then you don’t believe that it's true, and you are a racist, and almost definitely a conservative, and probably a Republican.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.