SFGate, the web-based “sister-site” of the San Francisco Chronicle, is reporting today on the controversy around a photo published in the San Francisco Police Union’s monthly newsletter. The August issue of the San Francisco Police Officers Association Journal went out with a photo from a supporter printed on the back page; it shows two labrador retrievers, one black and one white. The black dog wears a sign around its neck that says “Black Labs Matter,” and the white dog wears a sign saying “All Labs Matter.” Needless to say, the photo is not going over too well:
The dog photo “once again shows a severe lack of understanding,” said Sgt. Yulanda Williams, president of Officers for Justice, an organization within the San Francisco police force representing African American and other nonwhite officers. “It’s so inflammatory, and they still don’t get it. They still choose to inflame situations, and it’s just really insulting.”
...
“I think that it’s clear that the POA continues to be tone-deaf around the real issues surrounding police accountability,” said Alicia Garza, an Oakland activist who co-founded the Black Lives Matter online forum in 2013 in response to a neighborhood watch volunteer’s killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida. She said, “They characterize as rhetoric what is actually a really concerning problem of a lack of accountability, a lack of transparency and a lack of professionalism in that department.”
Anand Subramanian, executive director of the panel of judges investigating bias [within the SFPD], also criticized the publication of the dog photo, saying, “It shows a severe lack of judgment and empathy for the real and justified pain and outrage that black communities are feeling.”
There were no comments to SFGate from the San Francisco Police Department, its current acting chief Toney Chaplin or the police union president Martin Halloran regarding the photo.
Of course there weren’t any comments. What could the SFPD possibly say? The San Francisco Police Department is what’s commonly referred to as a HOT. ASS. MESS. Sure, lots of police departments are, but let’s not digress.
The picture is, of course, insulting and folks are right to criticize it. But there’s another point that always seems to get glossed over when “all lives matter” is thrown as the counterpoint to “black lives matter.” It’s clearly reflected in the choice of a white labrador retriever; that being, the arrogance of white supremacy and the masquerading of all things “white” and all things “affecting white” as being “universal” and affecting all people. “All Lives Matter” does not mean and has never meant “all lives.” Its supporters and cheerleaders aren’t talking about Loreal Tsingine, the young Native American woman murdered by police in Arizona. They’re not talking about Barry Prak, the young Cambodian man murdered by Long Beach police in June, or Noel Aguilar, the young Latino man murdered by the L.A. County Sheriff’s in Long Beach back in 2014. No, they’re not talking about them. They’re not even talking about Zachary Hammond, the white teenager murdered by police in South Carolina in July of last year.
“All Lives Matter” is nothing more than a horrid recoil against black life mattering, as in, “how dare you people think of yourselves and not us.”
It’s delusional, and it’s just as deadly as a police officer’s gun.