What's wrong with all lives matter? Unless that's an anti abortion dogwhistle. All born people's lives matter as much as each other, anyway. I thought that was what BLM was saying, not that black people's lives matter more than non-black people's
this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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that is what BLM is saying, which is why the response "well, ALM" is bad. This implicitly says that BLM means "BLM more".
It's a dog whistle used only by white supremacists. No one deserves to be murdered by a cop, but whenever there's police brutality against a white person, the ALM people are silent. I've only seen BLM people holding signs recognizing white victims.
In a vacuum, there's nothing wrong with ALM, but it was used by scumbags a while back as a "counterpoint" to BLM. So while I do agree with the principle that all lives matter, I wouldn't use it as a political standpoint, especially when BLM is the topic.
Black lives matter, too. That's all the message is. ALM is geared to say black lives matter more than us, which implies that the BLM message is doing, which it's not.
ALM is a racist dog whistle.
Imagine if your house was on fire, but your neighbor insisted nobody do anything, because "all houses matter".
In a vacuum sure, all houses do matter, but these phrases exist in context of opposing any action to fix the problem.
"Black lives matter" is a desperate cry for help from people subjected to the deadly violence of the police and of racist "neighbourhood watch vigilante wannabes" (killing or Trayvon Martin) or straight up lynchers (killing of Ahmaud Arbery), to demand "stop killing us".
Now imagine responding to that "No! No! ALL Lives matter."
People saying all lives matter are either that stupid to believe it means only black lives matter or that malicious to pretend it does when it was never implied.
I don't know how to explain it better if you still don't get it. It's kinda like if I was passing through a famine stricken country and people dying from hunger told me they were hungry and I went "Well, everyone's hungry" before turning a deaf ear to their suffering. It's that disgusting.
For folk like us who perceive very little opposition to black folk in our locale, or value peace etc., All Lives Matter sounds far more logical than just Black Lives Matter, as the phrase ALM encompasses all life, as is our belief. To us BLM sounds like discrimination, black supremacy. In reality, the people that coined the phrase and stand by it intended to send a different message that the phrase doesn't fully convey: Black Lives Matter As Well. Because where they are situated there is a strong pressure of authority and societal racism treating people whose melanin levels are higher as less important or less human. Said cruel society started using ALM as a counter, to once again belittle their black society.
It's not the first time a nasty group of people appropriated good, well-meaning phrases and symbols for their own ends and it won't be the last. The rest of us have to adapt and avoid association with them by not using the appropriated language.
Finally, those who comment that anyone who doesn't think like they do are "stupid" are themselves egocentric, ignorant of other communities outside their own that do not share their struggles and either have never heard of, or do not have need of the BLM movement.