Comedian Michael Che has an insightful and funny piece on the disparity between the innocuous meaning of the word “matters” and the visceral anger in which it seems to evoke when placed after the words “black lives”. Indeed, that visceral response is something that truly surprised me. Not coming from the usual suspects of right-wing apparatchiks which was to be expected, and I’ve longed since ceased being shocked by the level of depravity from that cottage industry. No, it was rather the response from those I should have thought more sympathetic and closer aligned to the cause of civil rights movements and racial injustice. There was something in the name itself that was perceived as accusatory, a great moral failing on the part of broad swathes of the larger and generally white public. A guilt felt for years of liberal indifference masked as enlightened sympathy. Not me! seemed to be the first, reflexive response, embodied in the phrase “All lives matter.”

Curious, because I did not experience this sensation myself. That response, coming from political allies, was so foreign, so far from my own thinking, that I was truly baffled, and then somewhat ashamed and embarrassed when I reflected deeper upon this canned response. No, my first reaction to BLM was the same reaction I always have when I learn about a new political movement from whatever ideological bent – the 99%, the Arab Spring, the Tea Party, etc. – my first thought is to find out more about the movement. What’s it about? What things do they advocate? Who is funding them? Who speaks on their behalf?  In other words, the very ordinary process of forming an opinion.

I raise this point, not because I think my reaction represents some englightened response. I truly was caught off guard. So how did the name strike me? It captured a frustration and anger that many of us felt, a sense that at the margins, blacks were perceived as inherently dangerous and therefore largely to blame for their own deaths and mistreatment. 

I watched a video of Eric Garner murdered by NYPD police. The police with clear malice and intent and with no regard for his life, murdered him in cold blood. That’s what I saw. It was as clear as any execution conducted in the name of righteousness and order. And yet millions of people looked at the same video and came away with the perceptaion that Eric was somehow the master of his own fate and destiny.  That any of us are, shows the degree that perception is forced upon us. The madness of the crowd.

I’m not famous. So there’s a good chance my words will fly under the radar. But they most certainly would face the wrath and indignation embodied by the response “Blue Lives Matter.” 

But here my response will probably surprise, shock,  and evoke a deeper visceral reaction than BLM could ever achieve. In fact, blue lives don’t matter. No, they don’t. Blue lives don’t matter in the same way all lives don’t matter, in the same way unicorns don’t matter because none of those things exist. BLM is an existential fact, and therefore a concrete and real historic cause. It represents a real program, grounded in history, perpetuated by institutions. To say that blue lives matter is as obscene as saying white lives matter, a way of diverting and divesting the relevancy of historic identities. Identities which exist because race does matter, has mattered, in the very formation of our republic. So I reject this false consciousness which is nothing more than a false choice, an insidious attempt to change the FUCKING subject. Sometimes words hurt in order for actions to follow. Or as Ionesco pointed out, only words matter, the rest is mere chattering.