Whether it’s White Lives, Blue Lives, or All Lives, your response to Black Lives Matter with a different hash-tagged phrase is misguided and extremely disingenuous. Why? Because a group of Americans feel that they are being slain in the streets like animals, and your response is not empathy, but rather to try to draw attention to a different subset of people. Rather than acknowledge a population that appears to often be treated as less than humans on several occasions caught on camera, you’d prefer to remind everyone that other populations in our country that are perpetually honored and thrust prominently and positively to the front of our American culture are humans too, as if there was ever any doubt to the contrary.

These movements aren’t even. You aren’t showing any bravery by proclaiming All/Blue Lives Matter. We already know they do.

It’s absurd how some constantly try to equate forces associated with Black people to forces associated with White people or the entity in charge. During the Civil Rights Movement it was Black Panthers vs. Klu Klux Klan, as if White people across the south constantly lived in fear of being kidnapped and publicly lynched by hate groups that often included members of the local police force and government, as did Black people for about a century following the Civil War.

Today, the two opposing forces in play has been Black Lives Matter against the State’s Police, which has been converted to a proxy for the establishment, loosely independent but not exclusive of the actual race of the officers involved in each incident. It should be noted that one of those forces is state sponsored and has a state issued license to kill. When a Policeman is shot, no one of consequence expresses the notion that the officer somehow “deserved it”. Meanwhile, when a Black person is killed by the Police, tons of people come out the woodwork to find reasons for why their fellow human being had to die, unless of course, they aren’t actually viewed a human beings.

This 80’s era Lakers-Celtics rivalry trope that we project on to our “White” and “Black” forces is grossly inappropriate. These aren’t equal entities trading blows, responsible for equal casualties, and equipped with equitable resources. By perpetuating that misconception, you are setting a stage for people to basically choose sides as if they’re supporting their home sports team. We’re talking about trying to create a safe environment for all citizens, independent of race. Right now, Black and Brown citizens are at the lower end of a scale measuring “feeling safe”, so we’re trying to bring them up to speed. These inaccurate analogies put that goal in harm’s way.