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.

This is not to say that our society believes that black lives matter more than white lives, because our society does not value black lives very much either. There is very little media spotlight on the slaughter of thousands of black people at the hands of other black people every year in our major cities. And none of the people who are screaming “Black Lives Matter”, say one word about any of those deaths because Black Lives Matter is purely a political movement designed to give Democrats and the far left more and more power. That’s it. And that’s another reason why Kanye West wearing a “White Lives Matter” t-shirt was wrong, not because white lives don’t matter but because it’s a political statement. He’s trying to be politically provocative, and we should never play politics with peoples’ lives. That’s the disgusting thing about Black Lives Matter. They put all of their attention on the deaths of a dozen or so black people who are killed by police officers every year and completely ignore the thousands of black people who are slaughtered every year in the streets of our cities by other black people because BLM can only exploit the black deaths at the hands of police.

We see the politicization of peoples’ lives in the way Joe Biden is handling our Southern border. Opening the border was done strictly for political purposes. Does anyone actually believe that Joe Biden and the Democrats care about the lives of illegal immigrants? They just want illegal immigrants to come here because they are potentially millions of more votes for the Democrat party which means more political power for them. The billionaires in our country are pro-illegal immigration because that means millions of low wage workers, bigger profit margins, and millions of more dollars, all of which means more power to them. But how many illegal immigrants have died trying to get into our country under Biden’s watch? How many young girls have been raped by the coyotes or sold as sex slaves by the cartels along the way? And Joe Biden and the Democrats do not say a word about any of those atrocities because it is all politics; it is all the politicization of peoples’ lives, and when you do that, you get more and more people dead.

That is exactly what happened with the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. The natural offshoot of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement was the ‘Defund the Police’ movement. Defunding the police has caused a 40% increase in violent crime and murder in our major cities – the communities of color. So, the politicization of black lives is costing thousands of black people their lives every year. If we embraced the belief that “All Lives Matter”, then we would be motivated to protect all lives and stop all senseless killing.

Not only do “All Lives Matter” but more specifically, “All Life Matters”, and that includes life in the womb. Everybody’s life is infinitely valuable from the moment of their conception. But that’s not the way most people view life and death, in our country. Life in the womb is valuable only if it is convenient to the mother, but if it is not convenient to the mother then it has absolutely no value and should be disposed of. Many people on the left who mourned the death of George Floyd, cheer the deaths of hundreds of thousands of babies every year at the hands of abortionist, many of whom are babies of color.

Sadly, in our political climate, the only lives that matter are the ones whose death can be exploited by the left to gain more political power for themselves. That’s it. Nobody cared about the life of George Floyd until his death could be used by the Democrats to gain power. Nobody cared about the lives of the people in Uvalde, Texas until their deaths could be exploited by politicians like Beto O’Rourke to take guns away from American citizens. Nobody knew where Uvalde, Texas even was until this past spring. Nobody. And everybody was content to allow the Uvalde citizens to live their lives at poverty levels as their city was being overrun by illegal immigrants and fentanyl. Their lives didn’t matter to anybody who is now using their deaths to gain more power over the American people.

“White Lives Matter” is a divisive expression just as “Black Lives Matter” is. Do we want to be exclusive or inclusive? In reality, all lives matter. The expression, “All Lives Matter” is inclusive, it is unifying. It connects us based on our common humanity, and what is more human than the desire to live and to protect our lives? That is the number one human instinct we all have. That should unite us. “All Lives Matter” strips away all the things that are notoriously used to divide us. They become irrelevant when we are all connected by our common desire to live. And that’s why those who want to divide us based on race or ethnicity or sex had to shut down people saying, “All Lives Matter”. They need a divided humanity. And that’s where we are in this country. Nobody’s life matters until their life or their death can be exploited by the powerful to gain even more power. When it should be the exact opposite. So, nobody’s life actually matters in our current political environment. The only thing that matters is power.

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Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.