From vigilante-victim Trayvon Martin to Staten Island choke-hold-victim Eric Garner to Stand Your Ground-victim Markeis McGlockton, there are obvious and valid reasons why the “Black Lives Matter” movement has been resonating. Racial profiling, targeting, stereotyping: It’s a familiar, lamentable litany of a country still in search of “post-racial America.”
Having said that, however, the movement would resonate even more across the racial spectrum if it didn’t also manifest itself as “Black Lives Selectively Matter.” If a cop is involved, it matters–and it should–although cops, most notably in Baltimore, are not always white.
But what about black gangbangers in Chicago taking out each other as well as innocent bystanders? And, yes, the killing fields of Chicago pre-date Rahm Emanuel. This war-zone dystopia is not a function of police bigotry–any more than the Tampa drowning death of Je’Hyrah Daniels was.
“Black Lives Matter” has to be seen as a subset of “All Lives Matter” to truly matter in a society where the culture of guns and violence cruelly and tragically impacts everyone.