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Is All Lives Matter a legitimate protest for equality?
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All Lives Matter is a form of White Fragility

White Fragility refers to white performative outrage in response to accusations of racism. It is a distracting strategy to avoid engaging with the issue of racial prejudice. All Lives Matter typifies this phenomenon.
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The Argument

The All Lives Matter movement reflects a view of racial dismissal, ignoring, and complete denial of reality. Philosopher Chris Lebron describes the movement as a "disingenuous retort" that misunderstands the problem raised by Black Lives Matter proponents. On Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher expressed support for use of the "Black Lives Matter" phrase, stating that "All Lives Matter implies that all lives are equally at risk, and they're not". In July 2016, USA Today concluded from the thoughts of Columbia University sociology professor Carla Shedd, that using the phrase "'All Lives Matter' can actually be interpreted as a racist". It also cited professor Joe Feagin, who said that white people use the phrase "All Lives Matter" to belittle the Black Lives Matter movement, which he described as "already about liberty and justice for all." USA Today reported that some celebrities who had tweeted using the hashtag #AllLivesMatter, including Jennifer Lopez and Fetty Wap, deleted the tweets and apologized. Wap stated that he did not understand the hashtag.[1]

Counter arguments

The All Lives Matter movement does exactly what it says it does; it stands for all life. In 2016, American football player Richard Sherman, who is African American, supported the All Lives Matter message, saying, "I stand by what I said that All Lives Matter and that we are human beings." He wanted African Americans to be "treated like human beings" and did not want innocent police officers being killed. In June 2015, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton faced severe backlash after using the phrase "all lives matter" at an African-American church in Missouri during her presidential campaign. Clinton has proven herself in the eyes of the African American community, which shows that she should have been credited and not backlashed for saying the phrase "All Lives Matter".

Premises

Rejecting the premises

References

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Lives_Matter
This page was last edited on Monday, 21 Sep 2020 at 05:35 UTC

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