Seriously, ALL lives matter

Seriously, ALL lives matter

“Black Lives Matter”.

It’s a big ‘hot topic’ at the moment. In principle, I would agree, black lives DO matter.

But I prefer to look at the bigger picture, and when I say that ALL Lives Matter, I’m not saying this in any kind of ‘racist’ way, I really mean it.

Black lives matter. White lives matter. Chinese lives matter. Native American lives matter. Welsh lives matter. Muslim lives matter. Jewish lives matter.

How many times do you hear the repeated phrase “diversity is our strength”?

Diversity can be a wonderful thing, as long as everybody is treated equally and fairly, and I have no objection to that, as that is my own philosophy, everybody should be treated fairly and equally and with respect, regardless of their skin colour, their sex/gender, their age, their religion etc etc.

After all, regardless of our ‘physical differences’, we are all human beings.

The problem as I see it is that the modern ‘diversity culture’ is failing to ‘bring people together’, while there is such an obsession with ‘identity politics’.

Instead of bringing people together by celebrating all that we have in common with each other, there is far too much focus on dividing and segregating people into identity ‘pigeon-holes’, and thus creating ‘minority groups’ to become ‘victims’ being ‘oppressed’ by the majority.

Don’t get me wrong, if someone wants to be proud of a particular part of their ‘identity’, I’m fine with that. If you’re proud to be black, gay, Muslim, feminist, British, Canadian or whatever, then that’s okay with me.

I’m white, male, straight. I was born in Dudley in the Black Country, I currently live in Birmingham (honorary Brummie), I’m English, I’m British, I’m a UK citizen. I’m European. I’m from Planet Earth. I am a human being.

These are but some of the facets that make up my ‘identity’ and who I am as a person. Am I ‘proud’ of any of these? Perhaps on occasion, yes. Can I change any of those aspects? Perhaps not. I am what I am.

But the point is that I am the sum of ALL these facets and aspects. And I don’t focus on any one in particular.

“I am what I am, yes I’m one of the people.”

The other thing that we can’t change, is history. Whatever happened in the past has happened, whether we see it nowadays as ‘right or wrong’ doesn’t change things.

I very much believe in ‘living in the NOW’, or living in the present. What happened in the past is history, we may look back and not like what happened, but it happened, and we can either acknowledge that, and vow not to make the same mistakes again, and thus learn and move forward.

I don’t want to go too much into what the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement is doing right now, but I do feel that divisions are being stoked and people are turning on each other as a result.

While people are getting angry and turning out in the streets to ‘protest’ about one black man being killed in the USA, where is the anger and protest about the thousands of innocent people being maimed and killed in places like Palestine and Yemen?

Or do some lives matter more than others?

No, they shouldn’t. ALL lives matter after all.

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