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Photographed is Kelly Coryell, a smiling white woman with brown hair and black rectangular shaped glasses. Directly behind her is a black and white cat.

KELLY CORYELLAll Words MatterThe Manipulation behind “All Lives Matter”

Kelly Coryell wrote this essay in her first-year writing course at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California. An English major, Coryell works as a tutor in the college’s learning center and serves as a supplemental instruction leader for multilingual students. This essay was nominated for the Norton Writer’s Prize and is documented in MLA style.

I’ve never understood the popular saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” I grew up as a tomboy; I’ve had more than my fair share of scrapes, bruises, and stitches. But I’ve found that words inflict the most painful injuries. On sleepless nights when I toss and turn, I’m not replaying the time I broke my foot over and over in my head—I’m thinking about some embarrassing thing I said that still makes me physically cringe or a time someone said something hurtful to me. Broken bones heal—words stay with us.

This is because words have power. A skilled wordsmith can influence us by using evocative words that elicit an emotional response. The meanings of these “loaded” words aren’t located in a dictionary. There is a context surrounding them that implies a meaning beyond the basic information they convey. Loaded words and phrases appeal to our emotions, not our logic—they enter our hearts, not our minds. They can manipulate, so sometimes people use loaded language to distract us from a flawed argument.

Such is the case when people use the phrase “all lives matter” to oppose the phrase “Black lives matter.” In 2012, neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African American teenager returning home from a late-night snack run. In 2013, Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges. This sparked the birth of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, when activists Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors, frustrated with the systemic inequality and oppression exemplified by Zimmerman’s trial, started using the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on Twitter. As more and more Black people died during police confrontations or in police custody—Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray—the movement, and the phrase “Black lives matter,” gained momentum, eventually becoming a major talking point in the 2016 presidential election. And in the spring of 2020, the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells, and Riah Milton reignited the BLM movement, leading to an overdue reckoning with racism in the United States.

As a direct response, Americans who either disagreed with the BLM movement as a whole or supported the movement but were uncomfortable with its slogan began to chant their own phrase: “all lives matter.” It should be acknowledged that some of those who have used the phrase “all lives matter” did so naïvely aiming to unify people in a time of division, thinking of the words as a positive affirmation to which no one could object. However, saying “all lives matter” as a response to “Black lives matter” is, in reality, sending a dangerous message: it steals attention from the systematic oppression of Black Americans and actively distorts the message behind the BLM movement, manipulating the American people into maintaining the oppressive status quo.

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Photographed is a large, black banner hanging in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The text on the banner readers “BLACK LIVES MATTER” written in all white.

The phrase “all lives matter” belies racial inequality in America by implying that all lives are at equal risk. The racism and prejudice endured by African Americans didn’t end when slavery was abolished in 1865, it didn’t end when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and it didn’t end when a Black man was elected president of the United States in 2008. Racial inequality in America persists to this day, ingrained and interwoven so deeply in American society that our prison systems and manufacturing industries depend on it. It’s so expertly hidden under layers of celebrity gossip in our media and blatant and bold lies from our politicians, and so “normalized” in our culture, that many people may not even be aware of the plight of Black Americans.

But the statistics speak for themselves. According to the NAACP, African Americans are incarcerated at six times the rate of White Americans for drug crimes (“Criminal Justice Fact Sheet”). The Center for American Progress reported that in 2016, the median wealth of Black families was only ten percent of the median wealth of White families (Hanks et al.). Police shoot and kill Black Americans at two and a half times the rate of White Americans, according to a 2016 report (Lowery). All these statistics point to the fact that Black lives in America are valued less than White lives. The BLM movement aims to change this depressing reality by insisting that “Black lives matter.”

Responding to “Black lives matter” with “all lives matter” ignores the unique prejudices and discrimination Black people experience in America. In an essay explaining why she calls herself a feminist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie observes that “[f]eminism is, of course, part of human rights in general—but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender.” Adichie’s point, that not every human being suffers the oppression that women suffer, parallels the way that emphasizing all lives takes focus away from the oppression specifically felt only by Black Americans.

“All lives matter” implies that all lives endure an equal amount of hardship; therefore, the struggles of Black Americans deserve no more attention than the struggles of White Americans—which is statistically false. Daniel Victor illustrates the harmful way the phrase “all lives matter” removes focus from the hardships of Black Americans in his article “Why ‘All Lives Matter’ Is Such a Perilous Phrase.” He writes:

Those in the Black Lives Matter movement say black people are in immediate danger and need immediate attention. . . .

Saying “All Lives Matter” in response would suggest to them that all people are in equal danger, invalidating the specific concerns of Black people.

“You’re watering the house that’s not burning but you’re choosing to leave the house that’s burning unattended,” said Allen Kwabena Frimpong, an organizer for the New York chapter of Black Lives Matter. “It’s irresponsible.”

To put it simply, focusing too much on the whole can divert much-needed attention from crises affecting a specific group.

Using “all lives matter” as a response to “Black lives matter” perpetuates the misconception that BLM activists do not believe both sentiments. The core of the BLM movement is the belief that all lives matter—including Black lives, which are treated differently than White lives, not just by law enforcement but by America as a whole. As J. Clara Chan explains in her article “What Is ‘All Lives Matter’? A Short Explainer”:

BLM supporters stress that the movement isn’t about believing no other races matter. Instead, the movement seeks to highlight and change how racism disproportionately affects the black community, in terms of police brutality, job security, socioeconomic status, educational opportunities, and more.

The BLM movement’s focus on particular inequities doesn’t mean other races don’t matter, but the phrase “all lives matter” is loaded language that implies they don’t. As Dave Bry explains, “Understanding ‘black lives matter’ to mean ‘only’ black lives matter has been a misinterpretation from the beginning.” “All lives matter” is the point of the BLM movement—that all lives do matter; therefore, Black lives need to matter as much as White lives. It isn’t “only Black lives matter”; it’s “Black lives matter, too.”

“All lives matter” manipulates people into believing those who say “Black lives matter” are against other lives. Jason Stanley explains the many ways language can be used as a tool for suppression: “Words are misappropriated and meanings twisted. I believe that these tactics are not really about making substantive claims, but rather play the role of silencing. They are, if you will, linguistic strategies for stealing the voices of others.” In other words, a group can be silenced if the language vital to their ability to express themselves and their beliefs is co-opted by another group. Supporters of “all lives matter” co-opted the language of the BLM movement, forcing a separation between the two phrases. As a result, BLM activists cannot say “all lives matter” without sounding like they oppose the views of the BLM movement, since “all lives matter” is no longer just a phrase but a rebuttal—a counterargument.

Saying “all lives matter” is premature, since it presupposes that equality has already been achieved. If Black lives really did matter as much as White lives in American society, then saying so would be as uncontroversial as stating any other fact. In fact, America is not a postracial society: poverty, education, health, incarceration rates—all are unequal between different races in America. We must acknowledge this ugly truth if we are ever going to change it. “All lives matter” invokes a naïve reality in which all races are holding hands in a great big circle, singing “This Land Is Your Land” as the sun smiles down on the world. “All lives matter,” like the statement “I don’t see race, I just see people,” may, at first, seem like a beautiful sentiment. Those who say such things may truly do so with the intent of creating a world where everyone is treated equally—regardless of race, gender, creed, orientation, and so on.

But upon close examination, these phrases—however well-meaning—are harmful because, aside from robbing people of their racial identities, they ignore race-based discrimination. How can one notice racism when one does not “see race”? How can one point out discrimination against African Americans if the only response one gets is “everyone matters”? If one insists that a goal has already been met when it hasn’t, why would anyone put in more effort toward reaching that goal? This is why “all lives matter” is so manipulative and damaging. It’s an attempt to convince us we don’t have to keep reaching for equality and justice, even though every fact around us tells us this is far from the case. Only by consciously acknowledging racial inequality will we ever be able to put an end to it.

The root of “all lives matter” boils down to one thing: privilege, and the reluctance to give it up in the name of equality. As Chris Boeskool puts it, “Equality can feel like oppression. But it’s not. What you’re feeling is just the discomfort of losing a little bit of your privilege.” Evening the playing field can feel like a bad thing to the person benefiting from the imbalance. In the 1960s, a White bus rider may have felt oppressed when she started having to compete with Black bus riders for the front seat—she lost the privilege of getting a guaranteed front seat because of her race. In the 1970s, a man might have complained that he could no longer “compliment” his female coworkers without being accused of sexual harassment—he lost the privilege of being able to say offensive things because of his gender. If American society starts to accept that Black lives matter as much as White lives, White Americans will lose some of the privileges afforded to them as a result of the oppression of Black Americans. Therefore, people who either do not realize they have this privilege, or simply don’t want to give it up, chant “all lives matter” in an effort to hold on to that privilege. If the BLM movement is silenced, the status quo of racial inequality will be maintained. The privileged must resist this unethical temptation and not mistake oppression for equality.