That was Eurosplaining. I do that all the time to Yanks and I stand by it.
And yes MLK was rotating in his grave that day. What’s your point, here? That it would befit me to want to see black folks being ineffective in their struggle? Is that really where you want to go with this? Want to continue racistjacketing me?
And just for the record I already talked about this with actual BLM organisers. They agreed, it was a missed opportunity, hindsight is 20/20, etc. The issue isn’t even lack of institutional knowledge – the civil rights movement is literally the textbook case on how to stage such things effectively – the “trouble” (not really, but form this perspective) is that the whole movement gained momentum so quickly that people didn’t have time to organise properly.
Co-opting that slogan would have just allowed everyone to brush the conversation under the rug even more quickly than they did.
Co-opting that slogan would have carried on momentum that was broken by getting into a fight with the slogan. It allowed energy to be diverted from opposing specific state structures to opposing a slogan.
This isn’t about “oh but white racists came up with it so now it’s a bad slogan”, it’s not about dictionary semantics at all that’s not how social movements or political messaging works. If Black people shout “All lives matter” then that’s saying “Hey we’re people too”. It’s saying “Not just your lives matter”. It’s also saying “if your schizophrenic kid got shot by out of control police, go come join us”: It allows for a broader movement, overall more solidarity.
You know what’s the worst part about this? The right is really good at this kind of stuff. They understand it. They didn’t go out saying “Black lives don’t matter” or “Fuck N****s”, they went out chanting “All lives matter”. Because they knew exactly that it was their most effective shot at breaking BLM’s momentum, even though they sure as fuck don’t care about all lives.
Not a thing I said.
That was Eurosplaining. I do that all the time to Yanks and I stand by it.
And yes MLK was rotating in his grave that day. What’s your point, here? That it would befit me to want to see black folks being ineffective in their struggle? Is that really where you want to go with this? Want to continue racistjacketing me?
And just for the record I already talked about this with actual BLM organisers. They agreed, it was a missed opportunity, hindsight is 20/20, etc. The issue isn’t even lack of institutional knowledge – the civil rights movement is literally the textbook case on how to stage such things effectively – the “trouble” (not really, but form this perspective) is that the whole movement gained momentum so quickly that people didn’t have time to organise properly.
Co-opting that slogan would have carried on momentum that was broken by getting into a fight with the slogan. It allowed energy to be diverted from opposing specific state structures to opposing a slogan.
This isn’t about “oh but white racists came up with it so now it’s a bad slogan”, it’s not about dictionary semantics at all that’s not how social movements or political messaging works. If Black people shout “All lives matter” then that’s saying “Hey we’re people too”. It’s saying “Not just your lives matter”. It’s also saying “if your schizophrenic kid got shot by out of control police, go come join us”: It allows for a broader movement, overall more solidarity.
You know what’s the worst part about this? The right is really good at this kind of stuff. They understand it. They didn’t go out saying “Black lives don’t matter” or “Fuck N****s”, they went out chanting “All lives matter”. Because they knew exactly that it was their most effective shot at breaking BLM’s momentum, even though they sure as fuck don’t care about all lives.