By Shelina Assomull Do black lives matter or do all lives matter? This recurring question that faced the 2016 Democratic candidates at their first debate far surpasses what any of them had to say about it. The larger question at hand, and the one that we should be asking ourselves, is why we must choose whether black lives or all lives matter. The Black Lives Matter movement is one that has swept the nation and given many – especially millennials – the voice to speak out about police brutality against African-Americans in the United States. It is not about making black people the same as white people any…
By Shelina Assomull
Do black lives matter or do all lives matter? This recurring question that faced the 2016 Democratic candidates at their first debate far surpasses what any of them had to say about it. The larger question at hand, and the one that we should be asking ourselves, is why we must choose whether black lives or all lives matter.
The Black Lives Matter movement is one that has swept the nation and given many – especially millennials – the voice to speak out about police brutality against African-Americans in the United States. It is not about making black people the same as white people any more than feminism aims to make women the same as men. It is about black people deserving the same protection as everyone else, an injustice that currently shadows our nation – it is about equality.
However, the same way that feminism has been mislabeled to mean anti-men, despite its true intentions; Black Lives Matter now seems to be suffering the same stigmas. This great cause has risen to finally be granted the voice it deserves and yet, as it grows, it is misconstrued as being something hateful, something anti-white rather than pro-black.
With the rise of Black Lives Matter, African-Americans no longer appear a minority. Once they are not a minority, they are powerful; they are intimidating, they are the ‘them.’ It is an inherent flaw within our society that we see things that are different to us as oppositions. We are raised based on this differentiation between us and others; it is how we know ourselves. It applies to all groups and minorities, we are ‘us’ and they are ‘them.’
This is Social Identity Theory, and it is essential to our understandings of ourselves. Black, white, male, female, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender – all these words are social constructs, but they are now necessary in helping us understand differences between people. These labels of differentiation are essential to our understanding of our own identities; we are only the identities we prescribe ourselves insofar as there are others.
With the rise of the Black Lives Matter begins the rise of the African-American in opposition to the white American – but they are not supposed to be in opposition, the black man just wants the same rights the white man has. The problem is that in asserting our differences between one another in order to recognize ourselves, we become opposed to those that are different to us. It is a problem prevalent in everyone – to see them as different to be sure of who we are ourselves. There is no white unless there is black.
The fight being led by Black Lives Matter asserts a singular groups involvement and re-establishes the difference between these groups, causing an even greater rift. The more they strive to be equal to their white counterparts the more they become isolated. The movement is black lives, not all lives after all.
The white man is not a racist, he hates institutional racism, but he is very aware of their differences. He knows there’s a difference between ‘them and us,’ just as the black man does. The problem is solved when we establish the identification of different groups without including a negative connotation to what being different means to someone else. It is not that there is a cognitive difference between black and white. It is that we see this difference as a separating factor, whether we know it or not.
We invite segregation when we see black and white as opposed; they are not opposed, they are simply different. Identity cannot be shaped by prejudices. It is up to us to learn how to recognize ourselves without detaching ourselves from that which is different to us. It is not about ignoring the differences between people, it is about stopping the way we see it as ‘them versus us.’
Black lives matter, and they do need to matter right now because for too long they have not mattered enough. But do black lives matter or do all lives matter? These two statements are not opposed; it is the people who support them that have allowed them to appear so. It is when we revolutionize our thinking to escape this ‘them versus us’ mentality that we can truly free black lives from the inequality they have experienced for so long. The Civil Rights Act did not fix racism; this is a fight still seeping through the edges of our society. The law can’t fix a mentality, only we can. Black lives matter and all lives matter are the counterparts to their own messages because when black lives truly do matter they will not be black lives anymore, they will be lives.
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