#BlackLivesMatter

Why is this so difficult to understand?

“But actually, ALL lives matter!”

Really? What a fucking revelation! Thank all of you All Lives Matter folks out there who are so quick and vehement in stating what should be obvious to everyone. Your compassion and empathy for All Lives, from the microbes swimming in your dog’s water dish, to the giraffes of the Serengeti (do giraffes live in the Serengeti?), to the penguins and the supermarket checkers and the skeet ball players and Muslims and Christians and Jews, and all colors of peoples, not to mention the spotted owl, is an inspiration to everyone around you. We are all incredibly impressed that your hugely overflowing heart is able to embrace every single life on this small blue marble with equality and equanimity.

But why, oh why, do you feel it is necessary to display your highly evolved form of universal compassion (certainly earned over years of meditation, or prayer, or community service, or selfless giving of some kind) in the face of a political movement whose stated purpose is to end the unjustified killing of black people by law enforcement? Why do you keep doing that?

Maybe it’s like when you see a breast cancer awareness campaign and just can’t hold back your compassion for victims of testicular cancer, so you tell people, “All Cancer Kills.”

Or could it be like when you see a local group feeding homeless people in the park and you are compelled to tell the servers, “All People Need Food.”

It has to be some really, really, loving place inside of you that recognizes how we are all in this together and all experiencing the exact same thing. That each of us, regardless of our identities as white folks, black folks, women, men, straight, gay, mammalian, reptilian, or even single celled organism, are all impacted by society equally. You must really be really evolved to recognize that the experiences of straight white men in America are not fundamentally different than the experiences of queer black women in America.

That must be it.

Thank you for sharing your insight and compassion! All these black folks who are experiencing their friends and families gunned down by law enforcement for the last… 150 years? …are surely inspired and heartened to learn that YOU see through the illusion of their suffering and are here to bring balance to the karmic wheel of life by asserting that their cry for justice is negligible in light of the amazing abundance of precious life existing on planet earth. Thank you so much.

Thank you for helping all of us understand that your right to spout nonsense from your pie hole is more important than Black Lives.

Thank you for clarifying that you really don’t care about what it takes to find justice, as long as no one mentions those being killed by injustice.

Thank you for distracting yourself and others from the petty and inconsequential troubles that our black brothers and sisters are experiencing in America today.

Thank you for standing firm in your commitment to being equally ambivalent to All Lives.

Thank you for all the tireless research you have undertaken to find new and creative ways of twisting data on police violence to turn the blame onto the victims.

Thank you for standing up for the status quo.

Thank you for sacrificing your humanity in the effort to deny the humanity of Black People.