Thinking this afternoon about the insulting phrase All Lives Matter, and its to me clear and obvious translation: “Black Lives Do Not Matter to Me.” It seems to me we may need an alternative explanatory phrase for those who are unwilling to get it. Something like this:
White lives matter too much. White lives are going to have to be valued less, so that black lives can matter enough.
We cannot level the playing field without giving up privilege, if we have it.
It reminds me of the idea that All Life is Sacred, and other such phrases used by forced birthing advocates to render women into breeding boxes. This prefaces the life of the unborn foetus over the life of the labouring mother. “All Lives Matter” zooms out so far it is a sentimentalising sepia soft focus: if we keep telling ourselves we are practicing Universal Love, we can save ourselves the difficult and exacting work of again and again learning to love the individual and faceted real human next to us.
Tag: not racist but
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#NotAllLives
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Trumped
The Senate and the House. They are just going to do so much damage. I can hardly breathe, hardly swallow, it’s like iron in the chest. Now we see how dangerous our fears are, how fatal this cleaving to the lying pseudo-certainty that fist-raising white men seem to offer – in the face of unprecedented disaster, in the face of loss. Truthful people now are saying, we’re not sure how to deal with all these new and perilous situations, they have never occurred before and they imbalance each other, let’s all pull together and get all our wisdom, all hands on deck. The pseudo hero ‘lone man with a gun’ fantasy is now ruining the country. I feel afraid for habitats, for furry and slimy creatures, for any human who does not fit the pattern authorised by Trump’s arrogant male-centric white supremacist tune. God help us, even though there is clearly no god.
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are you calling me a racist?
Got lured into a conversation tonight that reminded me of the old truism: that in some circles it is ok for white people to say whatever they like about black people, as long as no people say about those white people that those white people may be racist. Cos, like, that’s the *real* insult. That’s the really unforgiveable prejudice.
This is my suggestion for a new Australian flag.
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or anything but
“I’m not racist or anything, but… [racist remark]”
vs: “I’m not a feminist or anything, but [women are people too.]”
Why is it still embedded in our use of language that we need to apologize for opposing hatred of women the same way we need to apologize for hating people of other races?