Like righteous Lexington, Massachusetts, our white heterosexual suburb loves to hang banners celebrating Black Lives Matter and a rainbow of LGBTQIA+ victimhood (see “Our faith calls us to affirm Black Lives Matter…”).
To these, neighbors have recently added “Thank you essential workers,” “Thank you frontline workers,” and “Thank you first responders” signs.
Driving west on Rt. 117 to some suburbs that contain at least a few authentic working-class people, if not a significant number of black or LGBTQIA+ people, there is a glaring exception: a house sporting a “Thank You All Workers” sign.
Is this sloppiness? Or hate speech along the lines of “All Lives Matter”?
Related:
- https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2019/02/23/our-liberal-suburb-as-experienced-by-the-pastor/ (in which a person identifying as “brown” and LGBTQIA+ tries to fit in)
- “History Of Slavery Professor Explains The Mistake In Saying ‘All Lives Matter’” (Elle UK)
- “FACEBOOK GROUPS ARE FALLING APART OVER BLACK LIVES MATTER POSTS”: She only bans hate speech or threats, but during the Black Lives Matter movement, she started banning “all lives matter” content because she considers the memes people shared to be hate speech.
“Thank You All Workers” would probably not fall under hate speech – yet – but depending on the context it could be interpreted as a dog whistle echo of “All Lives Matter” and then, yes, it would be hate speech, particularly the more frequently it appears to compete with BLM for mindshare. The problem is the word “All”, which whistles out to everyone that you’re not anti-racist, so I would stop using the word “ALL” and probably “EVERY” in connection with people or groups of people. Don’t use colors, and the word “MATTER” and “LIVES” should not be used in the same paragraph to express a coherent thought unless, of course, they are preceded by the word “BLACK”. Also you cannot combine “BLACK LIVES MATTER” with any other word or phrase, qualify or modify it in any way. It must be used as a complete, unmodified noun phrase, standing alone.
And don’t get creative with acrostics.
Forbidden (for different reasons depending on your level of sophistication and adherence to the Black Lives Matter orthodoxy:)
“EVERY LIFE MATTERS”
“ALL COMPLEX MANIFOLDS ARE CANONICALLY ORIENTABLE”
“ALL DARK MATTER IS INVISIBLE”
“BLACK LIVES MATTER BECAUSE ALL LIVES MATTER”
“SPECTACULAR BLACK LIVES MATTER”
“AWESOME LIVES MATTER”
“ANTIPROTONS ANTIMATTER”
I’m just riffing here, a trained linguist would do a much better job, but it’s very easy to get into trouble.
Alex, you missed one; though maybe it’s too obvious to be worth listing.
@LP: Just typing that phrase is incontrovertible evidence of white supremacist hate and privilege! There is also no “Asian Lives Matter”:
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/07/27/487375314/a-letter-from-young-asian-americans-to-their-families-about-black-lives-matter
“For Xu, and other younger Asian-Americans who have shown support for the Black Lives Matter movement and anti-police brutality causes, this was disturbing. “To me, clearly justice is about getting justice for these black families,” Xu says. “Not about making sure that Asian people have the same privilege as white people.”
And of course, there also hasn’t been any large “Latino Lives Matter” movement (which would now have to be “Latinx Lives Matter”) for a whole host of different reasons. But the groups are reconciling. This article is from 2015 and considerable progress has been made since then:
http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/03/28/why-you-probably-havent-heard-about-latino-lives-matter-movement
Hmm. Apparently, the UK has real for profit re-education camps. There’s an opportunity for all folks majoring in grievance studies in this country !
The welder guy responsible for the “white lives matter” banner was fired as well as was his girlfriend who was found unsuitable for “Intensive Racial Sensitivity training”.
“we were willing to try and help Megan by paying for Intensive Racial Sensitivity training” but “After several conversations with Megan tonight however we have all decided that what is best for Megan and best for Solace is to end her employment with immediate effect.”
https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/breaking-burnley-fan-behind-white-22246694
What if you’re Asian and don’t know how to help BLM, or need guidance on what’s appropriate and helpful to say, write, think and do? MIT Technology Review to the rescue!
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/22/1004312/asian-americans-are-using-slack-groups-to-explain-racism-to-their-parents/
How about just spelling out the implied meaning of the signs: “BLACK LIVES MATTER; WHITE LIVES DON’T”
I wonder what the good folks in your town (or mine) would make of a sign like that. It can’t be racist, since it’s anti-white, but maybe it’s too on the nose for them?
jimbo: I think it would be more fun to print up and place some signs saying “NO LIVES MATTER EXCEPT MINE (which is why I bought a new TESLA instead of donating money to the poor)”
(also have BMW, Mercedes, and Audi versions!)
A lot of my neighbors’ lawns would also look good with “CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL (but my brand-new pavement-melting SUV is realer)”
Saw a black lady carrying a sign that said “All lives can’t matter until black lives matter” pretty close to “..White lives don’t”
Meanwhile in other news:
American Pravda aka NYT managed to dox Scott Alexander into deleting his science blog:
https://slatestarcodex.com/
It is interesting to note that the recent NYC riots do not appear to have had much if any effect on both infection and mortality rates almost three weeks after the fact.
The most plausible hypo seems to be that the rioters were young and therefore relatively resistant to the coronaplague, aka the boomer remover.
Riots are safe open the schools.