What Lives Matter?

Sharmeen C., 18. MI
Contact: sharmeenchauhdry@gmail.com 

What an interesting notion, “All Lives Matter.”

How very intriguing it is that these infamous three words only “matter” when a black man dies at the hands of a

police officer. Never will they be spoken when a muslim man is killed on his way to worship. Never will they be

hashtagged and blogged about when a white teenage boy shoots up a school and murders innocent children. The

words ALL LIVES MATTER only matter when they are used to prevent the Black Lives Matter movement from

progressing.

In the year of 2016, one would think that the human race has progressed far enough to realize that when one

specific group of people is getting slaughtered every day, they require a higher sense of attention than the entirety of

the country; but then again, in the year 2016, a black man shouldn’t have to fight a war every time he steps outside

his home.

Let go of all of those flaws just presented with the movement and focus on its meaning. In essence, all lives matter

means just that: every single life matters. If the people behind this movement followed it to the letter, there would be

riots every day. Every new death deserves a response, right? Every girl, boy, man, woman, transgender, black,

muslim, asian, gay, or straight person matters. So why is it that this term is only used when a black man dies from a

police shooting. Why do they only take into account lives that were not even lost and say they ALL matter, in the

same breath as condemning the whole race of the life lost.

The people pushing this movement truly mean to say that black people should stop speaking out against crimes

committed against them by people in power, because “everyone else dies too.” Objectively, this does not make

sense. It would be the same as someone getting angry with people who run cancer awareness events and say instead

“ALL ILLNESSES MATTER.” The people attending these events obviously know all illnesses matter and should

be treated but have been personally affected by cancer in some way or believe that it is important to find a cure for

this disease that kills millions of people a year. Anyone who said these things about a charitable event for illness

would be deemed ludacris and out of line. Why then, do people not see this disease on society the same way? Why

are people so quick to condone systemic racism? If all lives matter, why are the statistics stacked against the black

community.

According to research done by ProPublica and statistics collected, a black teenager is 21x more likely to get shot

and killed by police as his white counterpart. If one looks at the movement’s main defense (that police were forced

to shoot due to resisting or fleeing arrest) the numbers still don’t add up. When the victim was resisting or fleeing

from arrest out of 151 cases, 67% of those killed were black. Then let’s look at the cases where the victims weren’t

doing anything wrong. These aren’t the “thugs” that many people portray them as after they’ve died by showing

their mugshots either, no these are kids. In 41 cases where the victim was 14 years or younger, 27 were black, 8

white, 4 hispanic and 1 asian. The number of black fatalities are more than triple their white counterparts and

accounted for more than half the total fatalities calculated. In 15 cases just between the two year span of 2010-2012,

14 of them were black teenage fatalities due to police brutality. This does not even include all the recent killings in

2015 and 2016. Many of the specifics on the races of those killed by police are unavailable, the website

killedbypolice.net only offers genders and ages, however in the age of social media and camera phones, deaths of

other races would be just as likely to be protested as those of black people, if they occured as frequently. The people

who say this happens to everyone cannot even come up with a handful of cases in which white people were

brutalized by the police.

Perhaps the next time the outcry for all lives happens, people will be more willing to provide justice for all of

humanity.