You might have had a conversation like this in recent days:
"This is important. Black Lives Matter"
"Well yeah, but All Lives Matter."
"Of course. And Black Lives Matter. We have to say it because there are people who don't include "black" under the 'all' there."
"Yes, but Police Lives Matter."
"They sure do. And Black Lives Matter. Black people and black police."
"Yeah, but..."
The word but is a conjunction that primarily communicates contrast and objection. In the clause that follows, a but emphasizes the latter clause, which in the conversation above communicates the language of white supremacy. It says that "All Lives" are somehow more important than Black Lives. And now Police Lives Matter has entered the fray following the same logic.
If you are someone who has uttered these retorts to the Black Lives Matter movement, then there's a clear reason you want to tout "Police Lives Matter" today. It' because All Lives Matter was not successful in persuading the general public that unarmed people--more often black people--deserve to die.
"All Lives Matter." This is obvious. All life is precious, and every victim of crimes of passion, hate, or selfish gain is a travesty. But anyone who uses this phrase isn't talking about capital punishment, social welfare, immigration, or our military operations abroad. No, they clearly don't believe that All Lives Matter. What they mean is that All Lives Matter except the lives of people of color. "Police Lives Matter." This is again obvious. Police sacrifice so much under the mantra of protect and serve. Indeed, many of those same police officers support the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Police protect and serve, and they are also fallible human beings who try their best within a system that teaches them through media and conservative upbringing to fear people of color. Enter now "Police Lives Matter," the latest movement rhetorical frame aimed to once again blame black people for their own oppression. Police Lives Matter shows the deaths white people at the hands of criminals who are black. Police Lives Matter isn't concerned that they compare apples to oranges, a white officer who racially profiled and shot an unarmed black child is not comparison to a black criminal who killed someone who was white. The latter lacks the kinds of training and civic responsibility of the former, and we thus expect more from people who are not only trained, but paid to protect and serve and use violence as a last resort, not the first.
But to this movement performance of political spectacle, it doesn't matter that the circumstances do not resemble each other. In this frame, the death of an unarmed black teen is justified because somewhere else a black person killed someone who is white. They believe that there is a race war and that this war was somehow caused by people of color and the liberals that support them. This frame and the people espousing it fallaciously seek to place blame where it couldn't possibly be proven: that men and women killed in the line of duty this year are victims of a climate the Black Lives Matter is creating.
Yes, it's under this mantra that we do curiously foolish things because of prejudice, like arming the police as if they are a military, or failing to indict police when they clearly chose lethal force when it wasn't warranted. We say Police Lives Matter even though police have killed 26 people for every one officer killed in the line of duty--and climbing. Police are not even in the top ten dangerous jobs in the country, but Police Lives Matter believes that police are in danger because black people are mobilizing to say clearly, cogently, strongly, and furiously: we matter.
Despite news of a 30-second chant, Black Lives Matter does not wish harm on police, they only demand due process. But instead of listening to the stories of black people, their loss, their pain, their reactions as they fight for justice against the ongoing brutality against them in all facets of civic life, especially the law, Police Lives Matter wishes to place the cart right in front of the horse.
They call Black Lives Matter "radical," "hostile," "unpredictable," and other substitutes for the word n*gger. For what? The message of the movement is clear: don't shoot first and ask questions later. This is not controversial from a non-racist point of view. What needs to be done as a country is hold people of color to the same legal standards as white people, and to protect people of color because it is our duty to protect our own. If we can stop a shootout between 300 white bikers, subdue a white gunman shooting up a movie theater, apprehend a white man who shot a Democratic Congresswoman, and arrest white boy who shot up a historically black church without harming them in the slightest, then why--WHY!--can't the police can't take one black person alive, especially when they are unarmed?
Because we must dispel the most racist of myths: that black people are a threat. It doesn't matter if they are unarmed or fourteen or mentally ill or caught off guard or running away, Police Lives Matter thinks that black people need to die. It doesn't matter that fewer cops have been killed this year than last year, and it doesn't matter that 1/2 of the police killed are also black, despite being only 13% of the police force on average. Those aren't the cops you see on Fox News, you see the white ones instead. The prejudice is clear when you all offer only the obvious in response to full complications of systemic racism and the ways in which it manifests in the everyday choices of people with power and authority.
"Water is wet." This is obvious. But also, Black Lives Matter. This should obvious, and it bears repeating until it is so. Keep saying it until it is obvious: Black Lives Matter.