All Lives Matter


All Lives Matter is a slogan that has come to be associated with criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Supporters

Several notable individuals have supported All Lives Matter. United States Republican Senator Tim Scott has used the term when calling for racial equality and unity. American football player Richard Sherman supported the All Lives Matter message, saying "I stand by what I said that All Lives Matter and that we are human beings." In June 2015, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton faced backlash after using the phrase "all lives matter" at an African-American church in Missouri during her presidential campaign. Controversial American rapper XXXTentacion came under criticism when he supported the movement in the music video for his hit song "Look at Me!". The video depicted hima black malehanging a white child. After criticism, he said the goal of it was to show that "ou can't justify the fact that I murdered a child.... I'm trying to show that murder is murder." In similar fashion to his song "Riot" which criticized many rioters associated with the Black Lives Matter movement.
U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson is a proponent of All Lives Matter, as is Senator Rand Paul, who has claimed that Black Lives Matter "focused on the wrong targets." Paul stated that "I think they should change their name maybe—if they were All Lives Matter, or Innocent Lives Matter." In 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed that "Black Lives Matter" is a divisive and racist term.
At a performance during the 2016 MLB All-Star Game, Remigio Pereira, a member of The Tenors, held up an "All Lives Matter" sign and altered some lyrics to the anthem "O Canada". Pereira sang, "We're all brothers and sisters. All lives matter to the great," instead of the lines, "With glowing hearts we see thee rise, The True North strong and free." Even after criticism, he defended his statement, tweeting "I speak for the human race and the lives of all sentient beings. Love, peace, and harmony for ALL has always been my life's purpose."
Activists from Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter made news when they embraced during a "run-in" in Dallas. "We're all brothers and sisters," one of the protesters can be heard saying on CNN "This is how you kick down a wall."
On October 2, 2016, a fan at a Chicago Bears NFL game ran onto the field during a television timeout during the 4th quarter dressed in a gorilla costume, wearing a shirt that read "All Lives Matter" on the front.

Criticism

According to professor of critical race theory, David Theo Goldberg, "All Lives Matter" reflects a view of "racial dismissal, ignoring, and denial". Philosopher Chris Lebron describes "All Lives Matter" as a "disingenuous retort" that misunderstands the problem raised by Black Lives Matter proponents. On Real Time with Bill Maher, Bill Maher expressed support for use of the "Black Lives Matter" phrase, stating that "'All Lives Matter' implies that all lives are equally at risk, and they're not".
Founders of the Black Lives Matter movement have responded to criticism of the movement's exclusivity, saying, "#BlackLivesMatter doesn't mean your life isn't important – it means that Black lives, which are seen without value within White supremacy, are important to your liberation." Black Lives Matter movement co-founder Alicia Garza argues that “all lives matter” rhetoric has negative effects for racial justice: "When we deploy “All Lives Matter” as to correct an intervention specifically created to address anti-blackness, we lose the ways in which the state apparatus has built a program of genocide and repression mostly on the backs of Black people—beginning with the theft of millions of people for free labor—and then adapted it to control, murder, and profit off of other communities of color and immigrant communities...When you drop ‘Black’ from the equation of whose lives matter, and then fail to acknowledge it came from somewhere, you further a legacy of erasing Black lives and Black contributions from our movement legacy." In a video interview with Laura Flanders, Garza said that "changing Black Lives Matter to All Lives Matter is a demonstration of how we don't actually understand structural racism in this country".
President Barack Obama spoke to the debate between Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter. Obama said, "I think that the reason that the organizers used the phrase Black Lives Matter was not because they were suggesting that no one else's lives matter... rather what they were suggesting was there is a specific problem that is happening in the African-American community that's not happening in other communities." He also said "that is a legitimate issue that we've got to address."
In July 2016, USA Today concluded from the thoughts of Columbia University sociology professor Carla Shedd, that the phrase "'All Lives Matter' can actually be interpreted as racist". It also cited professor Joe Feagin, who said that white people use the phrase "All Lives Matter" to ignore the Black Lives Matter movement, which he described as "already about liberty and justice for all." USA Today reported that some celebrities who had tweeted using the hashtag #AllLivesMatter, including Jennifer Lopez and Fetty Wap, had deleted the tweets and apologized. Wap stated that he did not fully understand the hashtag. It also mentioned cartoonist Kris Straub, who tweeted a cartoon titled "All Houses Matter", showing a house fire, to illustrate what he saw as the problem with the term.
In July 2020, Cisco Systems fired "a handful" of employees for comments made during a mandatory company meeting which featured Darren Walker and Bryan Stevenson speaking about diversity. Some of the comments defended the phrase "All Lives Matter".

Facebook graffiti incident

On February 24, 2016, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, sent out a company-wide internal memo to employees formally rebuking employees who had crossed out handwritten "Black Lives Matter" phrases on the company walls and had written "All Lives Matter" in their place. Facebook allows employees to free-write thoughts and phrases on company walls. The memo was then leaked by several employees. As Zuckerberg had previously condemned this practice at previous company meetings, and other similar requests had been issued by other leaders at Facebook, Zuckerberg wrote in the memo that he would now consider this overwriting practice not only disrespectful, but "malicious as well". According to Zuckerberg's memo, "Black Lives Matter doesn't mean other lives don't – it's simply asking that the black community also achieves the justice they deserve". The memo also said that the act of crossing something out in itself, "means silencing speech, or that one person's speech is more important than another's".