White Republican friend, we need to talk.
Recently, people all around this nation began waking up to the pervasive inequities and racial disparities and police brutality here, and many for the first time unequivocally declared that Black Lives Matter.
You replied that All Lives Matter.
We tried to tell you that wasn’t really the point: that sometimes when groups are being systemically victimized and perpetually treated as less-than, that these lives need to be specifically affirmed by those with privilege until their value is as much as a given as anyone else’s. We tried to help you understand that equality that excludes some—simply isn’t equality.
You dug in your heels. You said that all lives matter. You called out White and Blue ones.
We tried to tell you that White lives and Blue lives have never not mattered and so this reply was unnecessary; that given the grievous injustices people of color have historically faced in this country, this was particularly destructive and particularly painful coming from you; the adding of insult to terrible injury.
You were fully entrenched in your fortified “all-lives” position.
Eventually we reached an impasse in the disagreement, and though I was skeptical, I walked away holding out the faintest of hopes that equity really was the desire of your heart, that every person did have the same inherent worth in your eyes—that all lives really did matter to you.
Ever since then, I’ve been watching you.
I’ve witnessed your steadfast refusal to wear a mask, despite the precipitous rise in sickness and death.
I’ve watched you unrepentantly going about your life without the slightest alterations that would protect your family and friends and neighbors and strangers from hardship.
I’ve seen you passive-aggressively posting Right Wing news articles with nonsensical pandemic conspiracy theories, captioning with a snarky, “just going to leave this here.”
I’ve watched you celebrating legislation allowing the LGBTQ community to be discriminated against—and lamenting Supreme Court rulings striking it down.
I’ve seen your lack of response as Republican lawmakers have made the most brazen and transparent assaults on the votes of vulnerable communities.
I’ve taken note of your deflation at the DACA decision, allowing hardworking people access to a dream you had handed to you with your birth certificate.
I’ve seen you defending nonsensical, panicked 911 calls on black people or gun-jittery, gun-wielding white people—suggesting some unrecorded threat or justifiable fear that makes it reasonable.
I’ve seen you jubilant at the prospect of millions of people losing healthcare: the sick and the already vulnerable, sexual assault victims, the mentally ill, women—simply because the name Obama is attached to such care.
I’ve noticed your conspicuous silence about families still separated at the border, about hundreds of people shut out of polling sites in Kentucky, bout legislative assaults on women’s autonomy over their own bodies, about the disproportionate effect of this pandemic on people of color, about a president’s supremacists tweets.
Honestly friend, it doesn’t seem that all lives really do matter to you.
It feels like your support for life is far more selective than that.
It seems like what matters to you—are straight, white, American, Republican, Christian lives; preferably those who live in your neighborhoods or attend your churches or seem the most like you. Everyone else seems like a threat or a problem or an afterthought.
All lives don’t seem to include immigrant lives, Latino lives, LGBTQ lives, Muslim lives, poor lives, Democrat lives, Atheist lives, women’s lives—and no, not black lives either.
And I want to be wrong about you. If I am, then it will be a joyous mistake. But I need you to know that this is how it appears from the outside, with only your words and your actions as a measurement.
This is what your life is saying, repeatedly, loudly, emphatically. It is the declaration of your politics and your religion and your social media profile and your dinner table diatribes. It sounds and feels like you have contempt and fear for a great deal of those who comprise our shared humanity. And as horrible as that would be, I can work with that kind of authentic bigotry that shows itself.
I can’t work with dishonesty.
I can’t work with someone who outwardly declares the value of all lives, while having so little regard for so many of them. I can’t work with someone gaslighting me or lying to themselves.
I want to understand you, I really do. I want to find a way forward that is life-affirming and redemptive—but I can’t do that until you put all your cards on the table and plainly speak your truth.
If all lives really matter you—it’s impossible to tell.
