Every time I see people saying “All lives matter!”, as if that is some clever comeback to the Black Lives Matter movement, I think about how silly that statement is. It seems to be a way of trying to discredit the movement, that sounds kind of clever and catchy, until you think about it for half a second and realise it’s just missing the point, or actively trying to distract from it.
The BLM movement exists because racist people and institutions in the world treat black people as if they don’t matter. Saying “Black lives matter” is an answer to that racism. There is an implied “too” at the end, and nobody is saying “Only black people matter”. Of course all lives matter. But saying “all lives matter” to people protesting inequality and racism is just dismissive.
So I thought I’d make a comic to demonstrate how daft that attitude is. Please feel free to share this comic any time you see people coming out with “all lives matter”, to show them how they sound to you.
I based the style of this comic on another one I made about how linguistic prescriptivism is illogical, you can sea that here:
Linguistic Prescriptivists Make Terrible Zoologists
I’ve also made this image in the style of my etymology graphics.
As always, if you have a problem with this content, you can send me an angry message here.
This is beautiful and perfect and my redneck relatives will be seeing it on Facebook.