FAQ For Us White Folks — Part 1

Answering questions on the minds of white people while in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Welcome to a world in the midst of a racial injustice awakening! If you’re like me, you’re feeling some anxiety about the uncertainty ahead of us and you have some questions that you’re either not sure how to ask or not sure how to answer.

I will be walking through some topics that I have seen be especially difficult and emotional to discuss, but topics I believe are common in the minds of my fellow white people. I also want to use this opportunity to help prepare myself and others for the difficult conversations that we will need to continue to have in order for lasting change to occur.

In this edition, I will start by walking through 2 hot-button questions:

1. If we want things to be equal, how can only “Black Lives Matter”? Why does saying “All Lives Matter” trigger so much negative emotion?
2. Don’t the injuries and damage from the Black Lives Matter protests prove it to be a vengeful, violent movement? Don’t protestors see how the violence and looting negate any positive impact?

Short Disclaimers

I’m wading into some risky topics, so I want to make an extra attempt to convey my intent to the audience.

If you’re a white person:

Thank you for taking the time to read this. This is a safe, judgment-free space, one where you don't need to struggle with whether or not the questions you want to ask or the points rattling around in your head will trigger conflict or backlash. I aim to try to provide answers to the ucomfortable questions so you don’t have to ask them.

If you’re not a white person:

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I understand that these questions are extremely frustrating and emotional. I want to help folks like yourself not have to carry the weight of responding to them. My aim here is to get all of us closer to a common understanding, so I’m attempting to answer the questions I know people have but are either too afraid to ask or have been asking in ways that are frustrating and unhelpful.

Q1. If we want things to be equal, how can only “Black Lives Matter”? Why does saying “All Lives Matter” trigger so much negative emotion?

#AllLivesMatter eliminates the purpose and impactfulness of #BlackLivesMatter

Short Answers:

1. If you’ve been fighting for centuries for your voice to be heard, the moment people finally begin to listen will be an emotional one. Any attempt by others to misconstrue that message — intentional or unintentional — may feel threatening, hurtful, and uncaring, especially if they come from those who have had their voices be heard.
2. Without any context, someone could reasonably infer that “Black Lives Matter” meant “other lives don’t matter” or “other lives should matter less than black lives”. However, this is simply not the intended goal of the movement. Arguing about a better way to describe the movement not only detracts energy from the issue at hand, but it also makes others feel like we’re not willing to listen, which is a pain anyone can relate to.
3. While “All Lives Matter” is an agreeable sentiment, it doesn’t acknowledge the problem at hand and it doesn’t state what actually needs to change. By confusing, distracting, and frustrating others, “All Lives Matter” works to undermine the goal of the Black Lives Matter movement altogether.

More Context

Imagine you and your people have been begging, pleading, and screaming for centuries for the chance to be heard. One day, the world suddenly begins listening to your pleas. In those moments, anyone who appears to misconstrue your message — intentional or not — will come across as threatening, insensitive, uncaring, or hurtful, especially when the misconstruing comes from people who have had their voices heard over those same centuries.

Part of the purpose of “Black Lives Matter” is to raise awareness and demand acknowledgment that the lives of black people have not been protected or valued in the same way other lives have been protected and valued. Part of the purpose of “Black Lives Matter” is to convey that something in this country must change in order to make black lives matter as much as other lives. Otherwise, our actions continue to convey that black lives don’t matter.

Saying that Black Lives Matter is not intended to say that other lives don’t matter, it’s intended to say we must focus on valuing black lives more in order to make all lives matter equally.

Another way to think of this is to imagine if the movement was hashtagged as #ThisCountryDoesNotValueBlackLives. Substituting that hashtag with #AllLivesMatter does not convey the same message because “All Lives Matter” is non-specific, softened, and unactionable. BLM is meant to acknowledge the current and historical gap between the value of black lives and the value of other lives (certainly white lives in particular). It recognizes that something must be done in order to correct that, while #AllLivesMatter does not. A reasonable person could simply agree “sure, all lives do matter” and feel like there isn’t any more they need to say, or anything they need to do. With a topic like this which is so systemic, being inactive means being complicit, which ultimately means we’re contributing to the problem.

Focusing on the violence or looting avoids the conversation we need to be having

Q2 Don’t the injuries and damage from the Black Lives Matter protests prove it to be a vengeful, violent movement? Don’t protestors see how the violence and looting negate any positive impact?

Short Answers:

1. If you’ve been fighting your whole life for your voice to be heard, and when you finally get a chance to speak, people focus on the negatives of how you’ve gone about it without listening to anything you have to say, it can feel hopeless and disheartening.
2. Not everyone who is inciting the violence and/or looting has been black. Some of those participating in the violence are not part of the Black Lives Matter movement at all, they’re simply being opportunistic.
3. When those in power demand everyone must follow the rules even if they leave them vulnerable, and — at the same time — the demand-makers do not follow those rules themselves, others will eventually stop following the rules.
4. If the lives of your loved ones were in danger, and you began banging on anything you could find to get someone’s attention, imagine the heartbreak and frustration if folks began complaining about the damage you were causing while ignoring your pleas for help.
5. When society and the media are consistently quick to condemn and discredit any protest that contains violence, it creates an opportunity for detractors to derail the message of a protest by intentionally inciting violence.

More Context

Similar to the answer for Question 1, a critical aspect of what makes this topic emotionally charged is taking attention away from the people who need to be heard. Focusing on the negatives of the protests distracts people away from the voices that have been waiting so long to be listened to. This isn’t just any distracting topic though, this is about violence, which is quickly assumed to be extremely negative.

The polarizing, negative nature of violence means that broadcasting looting on the news can create a strong, lasting impression that the protests are bad. This forces the narrative to be about the violence and not about the larger issue at hand: systemic racism and the lynching of African Americans by law enforcement.

To add another layer of frustration, condemning the violence of protests without condemning the violence against black lives comes across as hypocritical, demeaning, and demoralizing evidence of the double-standard in the United States. If society demands that everyone is non-violent, and yet police are permitted to kill African Americans with little or no consequence, it’s not surprising if some of those who are expected to be non-violent become violent.

If protests turn violent, people are dying to be heard

“riots are the voice of the unheard” — Martin Luther King Jr.

To build on the eloquent words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., if it becomes clear that the collective voice of a people is not being heard, they will find a way to be heard eventually.

Imagine a scenario where you’re on the street and either you or a loved one are dying and need help immediately. How loud would you be willing to scream to save their life? If people can’t hear your pleas for help, would you be willing to fire off a gun, ignite fireworks, or bang on a car with a metal rod to try to get people’s attention?

As urgency rises — like in a life or death situation — people will go to great lengths to be heard. With that said, another way to think about the protests could be this: maybe protestors are only becoming violent when they feel their lives are on the line. Before we hone in on condemning the violence and damage from protests, perhaps we should first try to understand the urgent message that people are going to such great lengths to convey.

Listen and Have a Conversation

We still have so far to go as a global community and family, yet there is an unprecedented amount of hope right now that we will be able to get there.

In order to keep moving toward the ultimate destination, we must learn how to connect with each other. This means learning how to listen, finding common ground, and having authentic, open conversations. I want to do everything I can to mediate and facilitate these conversations, so please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.

If you have ideas for more FAQ’s for me to answer or any concerns/suggestions about my answers to existing FAQ’s, please reach out to me at: nate@proofofthought.io