Arjarae Saunders

Dr.Collins

University Seminar

April 27, 2018

Critical Essay

The topic my group covered was the Black Lives Matter versus All Lives Matter. I

debated for the All Lives Matter which was the con group. The All Lives Matter movement

received a lot of backlash due to the fact that it was considered racist. The All Lives Matter was

created to bring awareness to all the races who experience some form of discrimination and want

to put an end to gun violence. The All Lives Matter movement introduced another movement

called the Blue Lives Matter movement in order to being awareness to the gun violence against

police officers. The Black Lives Matter Movement is a little selfish and implicates that only

black lives matter which is excluding other races. The Black Lives Matter movement protest is

not only done by black people and therefore should not only imply that Black lives are the only

ones who matter. The Black Lives Matter movement was trying to bring awareness to their

problems in their community but the problem is that they are not the only one dealing with those

issues.

My group the All Lives Matter was right because unlike the Black Lives Matter

Movement we wanted to be all inclusive when it came to police brutality and gun violence. The

Black Lives Matter movement was only worried about their race; however, a lot of the issues

they were standing for happens against Hispanics, White and Asians as well. I feel like why not

address the issue as a whole compared to one race at a time. I felt like we need to start

generalizing certain issues in order to get results quicker. The Black Lives Matter needs to
understand that people who are standing for All Lives Matter want to be heard too and have

issues that need to address. It was not an attack on the Black Lives Matter nor was it a

competition it was a chance to bring awareness to all races and all lives who want the chance to

live their lives without being in fear of being shot down. . We agree that Black Lives Matter but

Black Lives aren’t the only ones affected by gun violence.

The Black Lives Matter wants to blame police officers for the problems when the real

issues start within their own community. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, black

people committed 52 per cent of homicides recorded in the data between 1980 and 2008 while

only 45 per cent of the offenders were white. According to the data 13 per cent of Americans are

black and 93 per cent of black victims were killed by blacks. You can’t say black lives matter

and point the blame at only police officer when your race is killing each other. I feel like the

problem itself starts within your own race because if your own race is killing each other over

materialistic things how do you expect other another race to respect you. The Black Lives Matter

is a specific statement and is a little racist for only focusing on black lives. I feel like they need

to say #BlackLivesMattertoo or #BlackLivesMatteralso in order to prevent people from

confusing the meaning.

The All Lives Matter group is right because we are focused on the problems in general

without looking at race. When the Black Lives Matter look at violence they only look at the

problems done by police officers and not the ones done by their own people. The Black Lives

Matter movement just wants more killings so that they can add to their total number of deaths.

The Black Lives Matter supporters have to understand that police officers are humans and they

have families that they want to make it back home to. The All Lives Matter movement wants to

generalize their statement in order to guarantee that something is being done. The All Live
Matter movement is not made to silence or overshadow their goal but support and help their

cause. Their movement is racist and we just wanted to reiterate the point that everyone’s life is

important.

I think I did really well with debating my points against Black Lives Matter movement

while defending the All Lives Matter Movement. While researching information to prepare for

the debate I found little to no information that was pro All Lives Matter Movement. Majority of

the information that I found was against the All Lives Matter Movement and anyone that

supported it was considered a racist. In preparation for the debate I decided to take a different

route when looking for information such as statistics, interviews and reading police reports about

the shootings of unarmed black men. I wanted to cover all my bases which gave me a better

chance to respond to their arguments. I also looked on social media to get a better understanding

of why people were against Black Lives Matter as a way to change my perspective of the subject.

I am against All Lives Matter which made it difficult to argue for it and I felt bad at the end for

trying to justify the shooting of the unarmed black men.

 Works Cited

Damiani, Jesse. “Every Time You Say ‘All Lives Matter’ You Are Being an Accidental

Racist.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 7 Dec. 2017,

www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-damiani/every-time-you-say-all-li_1_b_11004780.html.

Roose, Kevin. “The next Time Someone Says 'All Lives Matter,' Show Them These 5

Paragraphs.” Splinter, Splinternews.com, 21 July 2015, splinternews.com/the-next-time-

someone-says-all-lives-matter-show-them-1793849332.

Smith, David. “The Backlash against Black Lives Matter Is Just More Evidence of

Injustice.” The Conversation, 27 Apr. 2018, theconversation.com/the-backlash-against-black-

lives-matter-is-just-more-evidence-of-injustice-85587.