Once upon a time I objected to the Black Lives Matter moniker. I didn’t disagree with the message that black people need to be counted more than they were. I have always thought that I counted black people as equals to everyone, so I just subconsciously completed the sentence by adding the word “more” in my head. Thinking to myself “oh, they have a terrible branding issue because everyone who reads the phrase Black Lives Matter will automatically just think they mean Black Lives Matter More”. But ultimately that wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t the phrase that was the issue.
What was the real problem was the inherent racism that had be ingrained into my consciousness by untold years of media and politics that continually make black people out to be lazy selfish useless people who only want a handout. (See Ronald Reagan’s speech about the “welfare queen”. Hint, he wasn’t talking about a white woman.)
In the end the problem I had with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” wasn’t their fault for picking a bad phrase. It was, in fact, me and my own preconceived notions of what a black person is and should be. All based on how society has portrayed them my entire life.
So now I very loudly say “BLACK LIVES MATTER”. And more people need to embrace this instead of trying to logic it out of existence with the pointless platitude “well ackchually all lives matter” like some snivelling little child with an inferiority complex. Because yes all lives should matter but in our fucked up society black lives usually don’t.
It’s the responsibility of the movement to be aware of the cultural connotations of the terms and slogans they choose to advertise themselves with. Movements have to adapt to fit their societies, expecting things to go the other way around is just entitlement and arrogance.
Can you imagine how differently the movement would gone if they simply adjusted the slogan from “Black Lives Matter” to “Black Lives Matter Too”. The fact that something this simple didn’t happen is a failure on the movement itself. Optics matter.
Can you imagine how differently the movement would gone if they simply adjusted the slogan from “Black Lives Matter” to “Black Lives Matter Too”. The fact that something this simple didn’t happen is a failure on the movement itself.
As a mater of fact I can. If they had used such an inoffensive moniker for their movement it would have been shoved to the back page of every newspaper and barely mentioned in any news program. The conservative assholes would have made fun of the acronyms and there would have been literally no conversation about the topic and no one would have had to come to terms with their own unaddressed racism that had been planted by 100 years of racist American ideology.
You and everyone who has commented with this exact “fix” for the Black Lives Matter movement should search within yourselves and try to determine why it really offends you so much. I saw someone mention the suffragette movement in relation to BLM and the comparison is apt. Suffragettes didn’t have any problem with disrupting the comfort of the people who’s opinion they were trying to alter. They knew very well that you cannot bring change by meekly asking for permission to get equal rights and standing in society. You have to get in their face and tell them YOU MUST BE COUNTED.
Your analysis is simply wrong. Nobody find finds the Black Lives Matter slogan offensive. It’s criticized because it’s it’s too vague, not because it’s provocative. The reason why conservatives latched on to the slogan specifically is precisely because the underlying point is valid and true. Regardless of how you personally see it, there are a lot of people out there who came to different conclusions as to what this slogan means. Many saw it to mean that black lives matter more or that other lives matter less. This different interpretation led a lot of people who would otherwise agree with the core cause to disassociate with the movement. This difference in support is key to any social movement as it defines a movement gaining enough support to achieve real change vs not. Optics matter.
You brought up the point that movements need to be offensive to get anywhere, but that’s not true. Social movements like this don’t need a “shock” factor in their optics. The videos of police brutality and the disproportionate statistics do that for the movement. They’re literally why the movement exists in the first place. The civil rights movement already demonstrates that this strategy is not effective or necessary. The same goes for the suffragette movement actually, and the LGBT movement as well.
This idea that social movements can get anywhere by simply demanding stuff is nonsense. All social movements require the support of the public to achieve anything. The suffragette movement campaigned to gain the favor of men, the civil rights did the same with white people, and so did the LGBT movement with straight people. Without the support of these demographics, their rights would’ve never been voted into place. All these movements were deliberate about their messaging, slogans, and optics. They didn’t try to shock people with their slogans, they wanted to convince people that they deserved their rights and they did so that appealed to everyone.
The videos of police brutality and the disproportionate statistics do that for the movement. They’re literally why the movement exists in the first place.
You are fantastically naive. There have been literally thousands of videos of police brutality towards black people. All of which were 100% unnecessary. Rodney King was beaten almost to death by police officers on video in 1991. And black people had to riot to get any real attention to how completely fucked up our system is because every cop who beat him got off completely scott free. And still 30 years later another black man was murdered on camera in broad daylight by a cop who did not give one shit because he and his cohorts assumed they would see no consequences for what they were doing. And without BLM and the absolute shitstorm of protest that every black person and their allies threw up, he would have been given a free pass too. BLM is the reckoning that white America has to contend with because they continue to support racist ideologies. And, quite frankly, if nothing is done to curb the racist bullshit being enacted against non-whites right now there is an even bigger shitstorm on the horizon.
When BLM was a brand-new thing, it was a normal, and very understandable, reaction, for someone who’s hearing it for the first time to say/think something along the lines of:
Who said they don’t matter? I know I didn’t, why are you saying “black lives matter” to me, as if you’re implying that I don’t believe they do?
Why specify “black”, aren’t you implying others don’t, then?
It was also badly-named for another reason: the whole foundation of it was in response to police unlawfully killing black citizens. “Black Lives Matter” in no way speaks to anything involving police action. The phrase naturally comes off as an aggressive accusation of deep racism (to the point of believing a certain person’s life is literally worthless, which is a step beyond the inferiority actual racists usually ascribe to their ‘target’) when said to someone.
I mean, the phrase wasn’t good either, hence why you also ended up thinking that.
Black Lives Also Matter would have been much better, as it alludes that there is enough prejudice that society must be reminded, and the acronym is BLAM, which could be used as onomatopoeia invoking gun shots, which directly ties to the causes original protests against the police. It also sounds more of a plea for help than it does an aggressive simple statement - which considering the movement aimed to be peaceful, is the kind of sound you’d want.
The truth is these kinds of things heavily rely on optics, and BLM was a very bad choice of slogan. People forget even the whole Rosa Parks thing was carefully orchestrated for a reason - you need good causes, good figures, and good slogans for rallying support.
BLM is so bad I wonder if the push to use it was some kind of counter psy-op to then push things like All Lives Matter to help discredit it, because I swear I heard the BLAM acronym being used as well in the beginning. I would imagine such authorities would have learned well how to discredit such movements ever since the days and success of the Civil Rights era.
I like Black Lives Matter because on its face it is a “no duh” statement (for most…)
To me, it is pointing out the absurd disconnect between what (almost) everybody believes without question and the actual state of society and policing in particular. There’s something stronger to “we matter” vs “we matter too”, but I’m struggling to put it into words. For some reason, I feel like BLAM or something similar loses some impact.
But that’s just in my head; as far as the success of a movement, you’re probably right. Also, if it was BLAM from the start, maybe I wouldn’t dislike it.
The reason why “we matter” is stronger than “we matter too” is because it doesn’t reference the other and thus is a purely one-sided thing, which can totally be read as “we matter more”.
I’m not sure though if that’s a good thing, depending on what’s the goal.
Any minority movement always has to keep in mind that it’s the majority that decides. Suffragettes did not take voting rights by force. They got voting rights because they managed to find enough allies in the male population that they were given voting rights.
Black slaves didn’t end slavery themselves. They managed to find enough allies that would be willing to fight and die in a civil war to give them their freedom.
And a group consisting of roughly 12% of a country’s population will not take the country by force and change laws by themselves.
“Black lives matter” is an incredibly polarizing statement that causes opposition (as evidenced e.g. by “Blue lives matter”, which totally has the implied “more” attached). It’s comparatively easy to say “No, the life of a black suspect does not matter more than the life of a police officer”, if you already lean in that direction. It’s a good slogan if you want to polarize and divide.
“Black lives matter too” is a statement that’s really hard to disagree with, because of course black lives matter too, unless you are a hard-core white supremacist.
So if the goal is to get the majority on your side and actually cause change, I think “Black lives matter too” would have been the better slogan.
Black Lives Also Matter would have been much better
Better, but still not optimal, since the whole thing is about police brutality, and that slogan says nothing about that. Even with the “also”, in general it comes off as an accusation of racism toward whoever you say it to (especially since it was said mostly to other ‘random’ citizens, not cops).
If I walked up to a random person and said “hey, women’s lives matter”, I should expect to get one or more of these responses:
Uh, duh? Who said otherwise?
Why are you saying that to me? Do you think I don’t think they do?
Because those are the implications that kind of phrase carries.
Once upon a time I objected to the Black Lives Matter moniker. I didn’t disagree with the message that black people need to be counted more than they were. I have always thought that I counted black people as equals to everyone, so I just subconsciously completed the sentence by adding the word “more” in my head. Thinking to myself “oh, they have a terrible branding issue because everyone who reads the phrase Black Lives Matter will automatically just think they mean Black Lives Matter More”. But ultimately that wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t the phrase that was the issue.
What was the real problem was the inherent racism that had be ingrained into my consciousness by untold years of media and politics that continually make black people out to be lazy selfish useless people who only want a handout. (See Ronald Reagan’s speech about the “welfare queen”. Hint, he wasn’t talking about a white woman.)
In the end the problem I had with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” wasn’t their fault for picking a bad phrase. It was, in fact, me and my own preconceived notions of what a black person is and should be. All based on how society has portrayed them my entire life.
So now I very loudly say “BLACK LIVES MATTER”. And more people need to embrace this instead of trying to logic it out of existence with the pointless platitude “well ackchually all lives matter” like some snivelling little child with an inferiority complex. Because yes all lives should matter but in our fucked up society black lives usually don’t.
It’s the responsibility of the movement to be aware of the cultural connotations of the terms and slogans they choose to advertise themselves with. Movements have to adapt to fit their societies, expecting things to go the other way around is just entitlement and arrogance.
Can you imagine how differently the movement would gone if they simply adjusted the slogan from “Black Lives Matter” to “Black Lives Matter Too”. The fact that something this simple didn’t happen is a failure on the movement itself. Optics matter.
As a mater of fact I can. If they had used such an inoffensive moniker for their movement it would have been shoved to the back page of every newspaper and barely mentioned in any news program. The conservative assholes would have made fun of the acronyms and there would have been literally no conversation about the topic and no one would have had to come to terms with their own unaddressed racism that had been planted by 100 years of racist American ideology.
You and everyone who has commented with this exact “fix” for the Black Lives Matter movement should search within yourselves and try to determine why it really offends you so much. I saw someone mention the suffragette movement in relation to BLM and the comparison is apt. Suffragettes didn’t have any problem with disrupting the comfort of the people who’s opinion they were trying to alter. They knew very well that you cannot bring change by meekly asking for permission to get equal rights and standing in society. You have to get in their face and tell them YOU MUST BE COUNTED.
BLACK LIVES FUCKING MATTER
Your analysis is simply wrong. Nobody find finds the Black Lives Matter slogan offensive. It’s criticized because it’s it’s too vague, not because it’s provocative. The reason why conservatives latched on to the slogan specifically is precisely because the underlying point is valid and true. Regardless of how you personally see it, there are a lot of people out there who came to different conclusions as to what this slogan means. Many saw it to mean that black lives matter more or that other lives matter less. This different interpretation led a lot of people who would otherwise agree with the core cause to disassociate with the movement. This difference in support is key to any social movement as it defines a movement gaining enough support to achieve real change vs not. Optics matter.
You brought up the point that movements need to be offensive to get anywhere, but that’s not true. Social movements like this don’t need a “shock” factor in their optics. The videos of police brutality and the disproportionate statistics do that for the movement. They’re literally why the movement exists in the first place. The civil rights movement already demonstrates that this strategy is not effective or necessary. The same goes for the suffragette movement actually, and the LGBT movement as well.
This idea that social movements can get anywhere by simply demanding stuff is nonsense. All social movements require the support of the public to achieve anything. The suffragette movement campaigned to gain the favor of men, the civil rights did the same with white people, and so did the LGBT movement with straight people. Without the support of these demographics, their rights would’ve never been voted into place. All these movements were deliberate about their messaging, slogans, and optics. They didn’t try to shock people with their slogans, they wanted to convince people that they deserved their rights and they did so that appealed to everyone.
You are fantastically naive. There have been literally thousands of videos of police brutality towards black people. All of which were 100% unnecessary. Rodney King was beaten almost to death by police officers on video in 1991. And black people had to riot to get any real attention to how completely fucked up our system is because every cop who beat him got off completely scott free. And still 30 years later another black man was murdered on camera in broad daylight by a cop who did not give one shit because he and his cohorts assumed they would see no consequences for what they were doing. And without BLM and the absolute shitstorm of protest that every black person and their allies threw up, he would have been given a free pass too. BLM is the reckoning that white America has to contend with because they continue to support racist ideologies. And, quite frankly, if nothing is done to curb the racist bullshit being enacted against non-whites right now there is an even bigger shitstorm on the horizon.
Also, you should actually read some of the things that suffragettes had to do to get the attention of the public for over a century.. It was not polite or inoffensive.
When BLM was a brand-new thing, it was a normal, and very understandable, reaction, for someone who’s hearing it for the first time to say/think something along the lines of:
It was also badly-named for another reason: the whole foundation of it was in response to police unlawfully killing black citizens. “Black Lives Matter” in no way speaks to anything involving police action. The phrase naturally comes off as an aggressive accusation of deep racism (to the point of believing a certain person’s life is literally worthless, which is a step beyond the inferiority actual racists usually ascribe to their ‘target’) when said to someone.
I mean, the phrase wasn’t good either, hence why you also ended up thinking that.
Black Lives Also Matter would have been much better, as it alludes that there is enough prejudice that society must be reminded, and the acronym is BLAM, which could be used as onomatopoeia invoking gun shots, which directly ties to the causes original protests against the police. It also sounds more of a plea for help than it does an aggressive simple statement - which considering the movement aimed to be peaceful, is the kind of sound you’d want.
The truth is these kinds of things heavily rely on optics, and BLM was a very bad choice of slogan. People forget even the whole Rosa Parks thing was carefully orchestrated for a reason - you need good causes, good figures, and good slogans for rallying support.
BLM is so bad I wonder if the push to use it was some kind of counter psy-op to then push things like All Lives Matter to help discredit it, because I swear I heard the BLAM acronym being used as well in the beginning. I would imagine such authorities would have learned well how to discredit such movements ever since the days and success of the Civil Rights era.
I like Black Lives Matter because on its face it is a “no duh” statement (for most…)
To me, it is pointing out the absurd disconnect between what (almost) everybody believes without question and the actual state of society and policing in particular. There’s something stronger to “we matter” vs “we matter too”, but I’m struggling to put it into words. For some reason, I feel like BLAM or something similar loses some impact.
But that’s just in my head; as far as the success of a movement, you’re probably right. Also, if it was BLAM from the start, maybe I wouldn’t dislike it.
The reason why “we matter” is stronger than “we matter too” is because it doesn’t reference the other and thus is a purely one-sided thing, which can totally be read as “we matter more”.
I’m not sure though if that’s a good thing, depending on what’s the goal.
Any minority movement always has to keep in mind that it’s the majority that decides. Suffragettes did not take voting rights by force. They got voting rights because they managed to find enough allies in the male population that they were given voting rights.
Black slaves didn’t end slavery themselves. They managed to find enough allies that would be willing to fight and die in a civil war to give them their freedom.
And a group consisting of roughly 12% of a country’s population will not take the country by force and change laws by themselves.
“Black lives matter” is an incredibly polarizing statement that causes opposition (as evidenced e.g. by “Blue lives matter”, which totally has the implied “more” attached). It’s comparatively easy to say “No, the life of a black suspect does not matter more than the life of a police officer”, if you already lean in that direction. It’s a good slogan if you want to polarize and divide.
“Black lives matter too” is a statement that’s really hard to disagree with, because of course black lives matter too, unless you are a hard-core white supremacist.
So if the goal is to get the majority on your side and actually cause change, I think “Black lives matter too” would have been the better slogan.
Agree.
But “Black Lives Matter Too” abbreviates to BLMT which kinda sound like a sandwich 😅
BLAM conveys the same meaning but the acronym does double duty.
“Black lives also matter” works just as well, that’s right, no contest there.
And you are right, BLAM sounds way better than both BLM and BLMT.
Truth. Also, here is no such thing as “blue lives” because a cop can quit their job, a black person cannot quit being black.
Better, but still not optimal, since the whole thing is about police brutality, and that slogan says nothing about that. Even with the “also”, in general it comes off as an accusation of racism toward whoever you say it to (especially since it was said mostly to other ‘random’ citizens, not cops).
If I walked up to a random person and said “hey, women’s lives matter”, I should expect to get one or more of these responses:
Because those are the implications that kind of phrase carries.