Monday on CNN’s “New Day,” Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson dismissed the relevance of the “All Lives Matter” phraseology as it pertains to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Mckesson told host Chris Cuomo that invoking “All Lives Matter” was a technique used to distract from what he thought was the most important things the movement was attempting to accomplishment.
“It’s this interesting thing where people are frustrated by what black people are focusing on,” McKesson said. “The unique trauma black people are facing in this country and I would never go to a breast cancer rally and yell out ‘colon cancer matters.’ And that’s what people are doing here – is that they are frustrated by the fact that people are focusing on the inequity and injustice specifically targeted to black people. We know that the way blacks have functioned in this country is unique and we have to deal with that trauma in a different way.”
“We also know that in focusing on black people that other people will also benefit when we get to equity and when we get to justice. So, I think of ‘All Lives Matter’ as a distraction technique that has probably been one of the through-line distraction techniques of the movement. But it doesn’t get us away from talking about the key issues at hand, which are police violence and the world we want to live in, which is a world where police don’t kill people.”
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