Countering "All Lives Matter." This worked on one relative.

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3. that used to be my approach, though i didn't have as much success as you did.

my attitude has since shifted.

i think of the phrase "black lives matter" as an emergency, distress call. it's saying that black people are being killed by police and generally not valued as much as other lives. but it's an emergency call.

have you ever heard a recording of a 911 call? people are frantic and their sentences are choppy and they're incoherent and they often don't say "please" and they swear a lot.

unless they completely can't understand them, 911 operators do their best to ignore all that and simply get them the help they need.

imagine how horrible it would be if you called 911 and the operator told you "we're not sending help because you didn't say please" or were otherwise not properly respectful?



in short, they're asking for help in a life-of-death matter, and we're quibbling about the politeness of the phrasing of the request. the entire conversation is an exercise in distraction while more black people are dying. what better proof for the need for a movement such as black lives matter?