You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. — inigo montoya

---

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. — inigo montoya

I’m not sure if that’s a backfire — I think that is explicitly intended.

You can have a phrase to raise awareness about the over-militarization of the police, and the problems about police use-of-force policies. Let’s call this #AllLivesMatter

You can also have a phrase to raise awareness about the alleged inherent racism of the police and the alleged problems of white people misbehaving when they are police. We’ll call this #BlackLivesMatter

Intentional language

The choice of #ALM or #BLM hinges on whether or not you’re trying to make a very “black and white” point, or if you’re trying to make a more universal point. #BLM elicits a negative reaction in some people because it is *meant* to — it intentionally frames the world into “black and white”, and is an explicit attack on those people who do not ascribe to that frame.

Root causes

The point here is that people violently disagree on what the root issue is here — which I think is the point you were trying to make in your original article on abstraction. However, while you can attempt to attribute it to an inadequacy of language, I think a deeper analysis will show that reasonable, educated, empathetic, and understanding people who fully understand the intent behind the language are fundamentally morally opposed to the premises being assumed. Lest you think I’m suffering from bias here, let me assure you, I believe this goes both ways. There are reasonable, educated, empathetic, and understanding people who fully understand the intent behind the language of #AllLivesMatter, but are fundamentally morally opposed to the premise that race doesn’t matter, and that we should all be treated as the singular human race.

Now, how we figure out how to argue our premises, rather than the symptoms of it, is another question entirely :)