Photo: Facebook|Philando Castile

Where are all the All Lives Matter folks now that Minnesota courts have freed the police officer that lynched Philando Castile over a burned out brake light and a gun that he legally had the right to carry? A murder that was recorded on Facebook Live and recently released police dash cam video. Surely they should be outraged by this injustice because coincidentally, All Lives Matter folks, at least in my experience, tends to also be second amendment rights folks and NRA supporters, and Castile's second amendment rights were infringed upon by the taking of his life that supposedly mattered, according to their logic, over his legally carried weapon. Strangely enough, the second amendment, NRA, and All Lives Matter folks have all been deafeningly silent in the face of a court decision that acquitted Jeronimo Yanez, formerly of St. Anthony PD, of second-degree manslaughter.

With respect to the fact that doing everything right should not be a qualifier for keeping your life, Philando Castile did everything right. He obeyed commands, he had a license to carry his weapon, he made the officer aware of his weapon (which should not set off alarm bells during a routine traffic stop involving a couple and their 4-year-old child), and that still did not prevent Officer Yanez from unloading seven rounds into Castile, in a state of panic, in the blink of an eye. Castile was also a man of character and contributing member of society. He loved his state, he had a job, he had a daughter and girlfriend that he loved and took care of. This is a textbook case for All Lives Matter folks to be all over, and yet…crickets. Could it be perhaps that skin tone has something to do with whether or not a life matters to this country? Could it be that the All Lives Matter movement never stood for all people as the name implies, but was established only to serve as a rebuttal to and a detraction from the Black Lives Matter movement? Could it be that All Lives Matter folks are in fact cowards that never stood for anything of any significance in their entire lives? That they've spent their entire existence turning a blind eye to the injustices that marginalized people face in this country while simultaneously viewing the country through rose-colored glasses with the other?

All Lives Matter folks claim to be on the side of black and brown people, and that they want to show that all lives are of equal value in this country despite the visual and statistical evidence of the contrary. They claim to be impacted by all unnecessary loss of life, but always seem to go silent when the death happens to a person of color. This is why anyone associating with the phrase "all lives matter" cannot be taken seriously. This is why anyone bringing "all lives matter" to the social justice conversation deserves to be dismissed immediately. You are being willfully ignorant at this point if you can't even acknowledge and respect that when people say "Black Lives Matter," they aren't seeking to diminish other lives, but are seeking to amplify the disproportionate injustice towards black people that would suggest that their lives are not valued the same as the majority of people in this country. Namely, white people. Anyone attempting to silence this message under the guise of equality and "all lives matter" is complicit in violence against black people. All Lives Matter folks are the exact people that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was talking about when he said, "in the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." I imagine that Brother Martin used the term "friends" in the loosest sense of the word possible.

Andrew Robinson

Writing since June 2017 · 1 story contributed