Almost every time someone asserts “Black Lives Matter,” someone responds “ALL lives matter,” “That’s racist,” or “Don’t you care about [Syrian refugees, victims of civilian crime, etc.]?”
I have been involved in many justice issues, and none of them has attracted this level of “What about…?” backlash. None has made people jump in with accusations that I am being exclusionary. When I talk about modern slavery, people sometimes say “What about sweatshop labor?” but they understand that I’m not tacitly approving of paid, exploitative labor just because I’m focused on literal slavery. When I talk about our area housing crisis, people may say “We need higher wages,” but they never accuse me of not caring about wages. When I talk about gay rights, people don’t chime in with “But what about the rights of girls in Afghanistan?” or anything of that kind; they are content to engage with the issue of justice for gay people.
I said none of them inspires accusations of exclusion, but actually there is one issue that does. Almost every discussion of animal rights and welfare I have ever been part of has garnered at least one comment along the lines of “Why don’t you worry about the rights of human beings?” People get really upset about the simple assertion that other animals may also deserve freedom from cruelty, and calm responses about caring deeply about both have no effect. Evidence that one works for human rights as well as animal rights has no effect. You have done something offensive, threatening, by even mentioning other animals, by giving a concern for them them any part of your care and time.
I don’t want to leap to conclusions, here, or oversimplify a complex situation. I just want to note how chilling it is to realize that only two issues, in my experience, elicit the passionate conviction that concern for X necessarily excludes concern for Y: a focus on the worth of non-human animals’ lives, and a focus on the worth of black humans’ lives.
Sermons in Stones 
11 comments
Comments feed for this article
September 10, 2015 at 9:53 am
affirmandpromote
Though I think there is similarly virulent but differently positioned backlash in some of the areas you noted. I wanted to add one more that I think gets some of the same type of immediate reactionary — oh well what about- response. It happens if you complain about the constitutional violations permitted in the name of homeland security and anti terrorism invariably someone is quick to call to mind service members who have died or those who where in buildings 1 and 2 when the planes hit. And in fact I’ls say in one more area namely immigration. Here in AZ it is hard to predict where people will come down on things and if you let too much sympathy for those without documentation you can be sure that you will soon be asked why you aren’t concerned with the Americans who wont receive enough social security to cover their cost of living because boarder crossers without papers have cause hemorrhaging tax dollars that have gone to providing services for “those people.” Both of these have that aspect of the person reacting being on some level affronted by the humanization of an other.
LikeLike
September 10, 2015 at 1:01 pm
caelesti
Very true & disturbing observation. I haven’t been following or participating in BLM due to health reasons but have been trying to having *in-person* conversations about race esp. with white folks. Problem is people have to *want to learn and listen, and a lot of people don’t. Still I keep trying. Wow, I don’t think I’d discuss politics at all with white people in Arizona unless I know they not raging Fox news regurgitators. I hate when people use veterans/service people for political purposes.
LikeLike
September 10, 2015 at 10:18 pm
Amy Zucker Morgensterny
Ralph, your comment reminds me that my experience is just my experience–and a remark about this post by another friend reminded me of another case where I’ve heard this knee-jerk “what about . . . ” response: prisoners’ rights. (What about their victims? What about people who’ve never committed a crime?) It isn’t as virulent as the response to “Black Lives Matter,” but it does pop up.
LikeLike
September 11, 2015 at 9:15 am
Roger
Bingo! Sadly, this insight has the ring of truth.
LikeLike
September 14, 2015 at 10:17 pm
Everett Howe
I’m not sure the analogy works. Here’s another way of looking at it: Responding to “black lives matter” with “all lives matter” is saying “ignore the particular, focus on the general.” But when you say “all beings matter”, and people respond “humans matter”, *you* are the one focussing on the general.
I’m not trying to say you are motivated by the same things as the “all lives matter” people… I’m just saying that the analogy isn’t so clear to me.
LikeLike
September 15, 2015 at 3:05 pm
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
That’s a good distinction. What the two have in common is that in both cases, speaker one is trying to call attention to the neglect or harm against a particular group of beings, and speaker two is deflecting that concern. But it’s true that the movements between the general to the specific are opposite. Thanks for that insight.
Karen is about to complicate the question further . . . read on. –AZM
LikeLike
September 16, 2015 at 9:27 am
Everett Howe
And, as my wife pointed out, the people deflecting the concern are deflecting it to a place where they are more central…
LikeLike
September 15, 2015 at 12:48 pm
K.L. Allendoerfer
Amy, I am not sure how the analogy works with Black Lives Matter, but I will try to speak to the animal rights issue. I’ve been one of those people who has jumped in with “what about humans” when confronted with animal rights rhetoric. The reason is that I don’t think that animal rights activism is as benign as you portray it here. While the vast majority of people who support animal rights are probably concerned with improving animal welfare, when I was a graduate student working in biomedical research at Stanford I came into contact with a much uglier side of that movement. I got to know people who had been targeted for harassment for their research, people–professors, students, lab workers–who feared for their safety and their careers because of harassment from animal rights activists. And as I came to understand how much I personally, and people that I love–people in general, in fact–had benefitted from research using animal models, I came to view this type of animal rights activism as threatening, not just to those researchers targeted for harassment and violence, but to human health and well-being generally. Most of us have benefitted either directly or indirectly from cancer drugs, antibiotics, other medicines, organ transplants, prostheses, and other surgical procedures, all developed using animal research. The prospect that these activists want to shut down lifesaving research, by violent and illegal means, makes me angry, and sets the two causes, of animal rights and human life, in opposition. In that context, the question “what about human rights?” doesn’t seem to me like such an off-the-wall, overly defensive response to animal rights rhetoric. To speculate on the parallels you’ve noticed, perhaps the disturbing reaction you are seeing in response to Black Lives Matter language comes from people who feel threatened by the activism of that movement. I don’t think the tactics of that movement have been as ugly or counterproductive as the antics of, say, ALF or PETA. But sometimes the talk of people having to give up “privileges” rather than restoring rights that have been wrongly taken away makes it sound like those activists want to drag everyone else down rather than lifting people up.
LikeLike
September 15, 2015 at 3:24 pm
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
K., great points. To the animal rights one, yes, I think it is true that there is an actual tension between human well-being and the well-being of other animals. This is the case not only from groups with extreme and ugly tactics; it’s just a fact. We currently operate as if other animals do not have equal rights with humans, and I benefit from that, but it’s made easier by the fact that I don’t have to look it in the face. If I did–if someone said, “We can find a cure for your neurological ailment, if we torture this cat”–what would I choose? I don’t know.
Many cases don’t force that choice, luckily. We could insist that lab animals be treated as kindly as possible, and that we only experiment for important purposes–in other words, we could act as if other animals have SOME rights without acting as if they have EQUAL rights.
I hear you on the complications of the word “privilege.” I find the concept helpful–to recognize that what I take as my right as a human being is actually a gift doled out to just a few. But it does seem to imply that those are things that we should give up, rather than things we should extend to everyone.
In some cases, if others got their rights, I WOULD lose some of my current status. For example, if the black people who are currently being told, falsely, “The apartment’s been rented,” got to compete for it without that disadvantage, then I would be less likely to get it. This is what equality demands but let’s not pretend the pie is infinitely large. But Black Lives Matter is mostly focused upon the ones that are in no way zero-sum. EVERYONE could be afforded the so-called “privilege,” actually the right, not to be held at gunpoint by cops for setting off an alarm at the place they have worked for a year and have the key to, to cite a real-life example that was mentioned in Caring and Sharing two weeks ago. It should not, and need not, be only white people who can count on being treated as a person with a false alarm, and it doesn’t diminish me in the slightest if black and Latino people join that group.
LikeLike
September 16, 2015 at 8:25 am
K.L. Allendoerfer
Amy, I share your view of animal rights explained here, thanks. What you write is what the research community does: the rules for accreditation of any facility require the “three R’s,” replacement (of animals with alternatives when possible), reduction (in use of animals at all) and refinement (using methods for alleviating pain and suffering and enhancing welfare). In my original comment I was addressing your claim that people got really upset about “the simple assertion that other animals may also deserve freedom from cruelty.” I disagree that that is, generally, what people are getting really upset about (although there may be an exception here or there who probably has other issues). People are getting really upset, when they are, about the excesses and ugliness of the radical fringe of the movement, which does sometimes manage to hide itself behind benign-sounding “simple assertions.”
Again, I don’t know if there is a fruitful analogy to be drawn to the Black Lives Matter movement. I suppose one might speculate that non-black people who get upset about the phrase “Black Lives Matter” are viewing black lives as somehow less than human lives, and yes, that would be very disturbing and horrible. And maybe it’s true; I don’t deny racism is alive and well.
But I guess I think it’s better to give people the benefit of the doubt and not believe that about them across the board. I think it’s more likely that the people getting upset are people who are insecure, who feel marginalized, and who have been told by the powers that be that they don’t matter.
LikeLike
September 18, 2015 at 11:39 am
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
Thanks. It’s so good to know that you’ve witnessed such high standards of care for animals in the places you’ve done research.
I wasn’t actually even thinking about such fraught questions when I wrote my paragraph about responses to animal rights and welfare, but of interactions where someone posted a picture of a puppy mill, or a video of factory farming, and a comment popped up with “What about human beings?”–the implication in this case being that the few minutes spent in viewing and posting it were robbed from humans. Those are the simpler cases. I can much more easily understand people getting upset when the well-being of other animals and humans really do conflict sharply.
Most of all I appreciate your decision to assume that “the people getting upset are people who are insecure, who feel marginalized, and who have been told by the powers that be that they don’t matter.” That is surely a more effective approach than judgment or anger, even though those reactions are understandable. I aspire to the ideal you express so well.
I also think that along with marginalization there is just a profound lack of knowledge. Some people grow up knowing that police rove their neighborhoods looking for opportunities to cite them for trivialities; others grow up thinking that if you don’t do anything illegal, you won’t come into conflict with the cops. The latter are badly misinformed, but I know nothing is to be gained by castigating someone for not learning what was carefully hidden from them.
I’m so glad you’re with us at UUCPA!
LikeLike