PUTNEY — There has been a standoff between two slogans in Putney: Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter.
“All Lives Matter” is being seen by many people, including people of color, as a racist rebuttal to Black Lives Matter.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence “that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” at that time women and Black men and other people of color were not included. It took four amendments over the course of 129 years (1791–1921) to revise the U.S. Constitution accordingly.
Black lives have been kept from equality by enslavement and severe discrimination. The “Black lives matter” slogan was coined in 2013 in response to the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012 in Sanford, Florida. It was reinforced in 2014 by the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in New York City, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland; in 2015 by Walter Scott, North Charleston, South Carolina; in 2016 by Alton Sterling, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile, St. Paul, Minnesota; in 2018 by Stephen Clark, Sacramento, California; in 2020 by Breonna Taylor, Louisville, Kentucky, and most famously George Floyd in Minneapolis; and in 2021 by Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.
Yes, all people's lives matter. But in practice, Black lives have not mattered equally, and white supremacists want to keep it that way.
North and South America were colonized by white Europeans who believed in their superiority and their right to possess other people's lands. That habit of thought still persists.
It is time that Black lives matter equally with all others so that - in reality as well as in principle - all lives matter. These two phrases should be reconciled rather than opposed.