All That Matters

Kanye West went to a Paris fashion show, this week, wearing a t-shirt with “White Lives Matter” scrawled across the back. Predictably, people on the left immediately went apoplectic, condemning West. West told Tucker Carlson, the reason “why I wrote ‘White Lives Matter’ on a shirt is they do. It’s an obvious thing.” But he really wore the shirt to be provocative. “White Lives Matter” is a provocative statement because it is exclusionary. It gives the sense that the wearer is claiming that white lives matter more than non-white lives, which isn’t true. We can’t point out that the expression, “Black Lives Matter” is divisive and exclusionary, and then turn around and rally around the expression “White Lives Matter”. They both are equally divisive.

West’s father thought the shirt was funny because it was “just a black man stating the obvious.” Black Lives Matter advocates would agree with him, arguing that we don’t need to say, “White Lives Matter” because in our country white lives obviously matter, whereas they have to say “Black Lives Matter” because in America, black lives do not matter, especially when it comes to police shootings. But that is not actually the case. Twice as many unarmed white people are killed by cops as unarmed black people. Yet, how many times has the police killing an unarmed white person become a national news story? How many times has it spurred an international movement? The answer is none.

Every single death of a white person at the hands of a police officer goes unnoticed in the media, on the internet, in our society, whereas the police shootings of unarmed black people create major news stories. We know all the names; George Floyd, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Jacob Blake, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Sandra Bland, Breanna Taylor. We don’t know the name of one unarmed white person who has been killed by a police officer. Not one. Because no one cares when an unarmed white person is killed. No one. If they did, then we would be able to come up with one name, but we can’t because there is zero media coverage. There hasn’t been one unarmed innocent white person shot and killed by the police? Is it automatically assumed by the media that the white person who got shot by the cops deserved it, while the black person who got shot by the cops was an innocent victim? Nobody gives a second thought about all those white people killed by cops because their life doesn’t matter.