The Rhetorical Appropriation of Black Lives Matter
With the accessibility allowed through social media and traditional forms of news, Black Lives Matter – as both a movement and an organization – has reached unprecedented heights. A crusade designed to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by Black people – particularly incidents of police brutality and racially motivated violence – it is no surprise that it has been met with criticisms from police forces and unions. Many, however, fail to acknowledge the rhetoric at play when statements of “Black lives matter” are met with “blue lives matter.” The rhetoric works to generate victimhood amongst police officers rather than acknowledging how they can be perpetrators of violence against racial and ethnic minorities; the statement needlessly compares the struggles of officers to the struggles of the Black community. This is, in fact, a narrow example of a broader phenomenon that works to downplay the struggles of the Black community by generating inherent competition and diverting attention elsewhere.
The History of Black Lives Matter
To understand the irony of Blue Lives Matter, one must first understand the reality of Black Lives Matter (BLM). While the term itself only surfaced in 2013 in reaction to the acquittal of neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in the widely perceived unjustified shooting and death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin (Vernon E. Jordan Law Library, 2023), BLM is not only inspired by but originates from the 1960’s civil rights movement. The murder of Emmett Till – which is understood to be one of the many triggers of the American Civil Rights Movement – mirrors that of Trayvon Martin: both were young Black boys visiting the communities in which they were killed, and their killers were acquitted (Morris, 2021). Accordingly, both cases led to public anguish and outrage that sparked significant and long-lasting social movements. The rhetoric of BLM is vital to the movement, though it is often misunderstood to be a call of superiority or preference. It does not say “Black lives matter more” or “only Black lives matter”, as is commonly surmised by people who wish to devalue the movement. In reality, the statement “Black lives matter” means exactly what it states: Black lives matter, and the dehumanizing treatment Black people are subjected to, especially regarding police brutality, is unacceptable.
Blue Lives Matter as a Counter-Movement
The successes and popularity of the BLM movement have seen a response from opposing movements from both unintended racist and pro-police forces – All Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter, respectively. Such movements take hold with both rhetorical and physical power. The former movement, while not necessarily indicative of anti-blackness or inherent racial divides, is nonetheless a prominent example of racial colorblindness. Defined as the practice of ignoring or overlooking racial and ethnic differences to promote racial harmony, colorblindness effectively allows those with certain racial and ethnic privileges to ignore the experiences of racialized others. The movement argues that there is an unnecessary need to specifically say “Black lives matter” – by replacing the phrase with “all lives matter”, everyone can be included. Alternatively, it should be acknowledged that the BLM movement arose because of practices and cycles that have disproportionately affected Black people in a specific realm of society. By stating “all lives matter” and ignoring the direct impact of these issues on the Black community, individuals with good intentions end up downplaying and devaluing the unique experiences of Black Americans.
The latter movement, Blue Lives Matter, arose in late 2014 as a counter-movement to BLM during the grand jury investigation of police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown (Solomon & Martin, 2019). The movement claims that instead of there being a war conducted by police on Black people, there is a war on police (Cooper, 2020) through physical attacks, negative public sentiment caused by BLM, and reform-ensued limitations of their capabilities/span of control. While a well-founded conversation can certainly be had on the dangers of policing as an occupation and ways the job should be reformed to make it better for officers, it is worthwhile to acknowledge that calls for attention to blue lives are usually in reaction to calls for attention to Black lives. This is indicative of a trend that often arises in reaction to civil rights efforts: “whataboutisms”, a slang term to refer to the downplaying and devaluing of an issue to emphasize a different issue. Research has found that the construction of blue solidarity, particularly through police unions support of Blue Lives Matter campaigns, “serves to repress racial justice movements that challenge police authority…[by] undermining and criminalizing movements that contest police violence against racialized communities” (Thomas & Tufts, 2020).
The creation and enforcement of Blue Lives Matter is representative of competitive victimhood, in which groups “identify as having suffered more than another group… [they] display particular behavioral patterns, including attempting to publicly establish that they have suffered more, and qualitatively differently, than opposing groups” (Solomon & Martin, 2019). This is not to say that BLM does not inherently partake in competitive victimhood when it acknowledges how Black people have been at the disadvantaged end of the American political and social systems since before the nation’s founding. What is, arguably, of most importance is not only the capacity of these groups to harm but also what actions these groups take. BLM does not exist to work against Blue Lives Matter or the police force as a whole; instead, it targets racist policies, practices, and cycles. The same cannot be said for Blue Lives Matter, which arose simply as a reaction to BLM and works to “provide financial and ideological support to those they believe are targeted by the Black Lives Matter Movement… and shift the national narrative away from the focus on race purveyed by Black Lives Matter” (Solomon & Martin, 2019). Whereas BLM seeks to acquire an equal, valued agency in the country, as is typical for disadvantaged groups engaged in competitive victimhood, Blue Lives Matter seeks to gain internal and external esteem (Solomon & Martin, 2019).
The Rhetorical Appropriation of “Black Lives Matter”
The rhetorical power in question comes from the implied comparison between blue lives and Black lives; saying “blue lives matter” diverts attention from calls for police accountability to the difficulties of policing, encouraging sympathy and concern for what officers experience, which overtakes concern for what officers do/perpetuate against citizens. How can one criticize and critique the very people who put their lives on the line daily to protect the lives and interests of citizens? Accordingly, at the same time that such a movement emphasizes concern for blue lives, it devalues BLM by rationalizing police actions through the lens of police culture and occupational hazards. Lastly, the phrase “blue lives matter” erases the reality that one can choose to be “blue” while the same freedom of choice does not exist for Black people. Ironically, this seems to be a purposeful choice on the part of Blue Lives Matter, as the movement calls for laws that “treat violence against police as a hate crime, redefining the occupation of police (and other first responders) as a protected class of identity alongside race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation” (Solomon & Martin, 2019). Blue Lives Matter calls attention to the dangers of a profession, while Black Lives Matter calls attention to the dangers of being labeled a certain race; thus, at the same time that Blue Lives Matter appropriates and co-opts an entire movement, it also reduces the value and reality of the issue initially discussed.
The Physical Manifestation of Blue Lives Matter
While the rhetorical power enabled and manipulated by Blue Lives Matter is vital to understand, it should also be brought to attention that the phrase physically manifests in the actions of police across the country. For example, during the 1960s civil rights movement, acknowledgments of police brutality against Black people were met with, ironically, more police brutality. Under the pretense of riot control, police would often discourage and disperse protests through physical violence, whether it be water hoses, police dogs, tear gas, or straight-up beatings. In this way, some issues regarding the police and the Black community are caused by officers themselves and are also inherent to their profession. Nonetheless, they responded to claims that they were treating Black people as sub-human by continuing to treat them as sub-human. This pattern still exists today, in which modern BLM protests were met with war-like equipment and false claims that riots far outnumbered peaceful protests.
In general, the attempt to racialize and the inherent isolation of blue lives is a symptom of police culture as a whole, which sees that officers can only be truly understood and valued by other officers. This generates an “us vs. them” mentality, in which outsiders are viewed suspiciously and as active obstacles to the lives and work of police officers. This reinforces the original issues called to attention by BLM, in which these so-called outsiders are viewed negatively and not as deserving of immediate humanizing care and concern. An officer’s political and social allegiance to Blue Lives Matter is symbolic of allegiance to the Blue Wall, referring to the tendency of American officers to isolate themselves and increasingly rely on each other, generating inherent distrust of the broader community and extreme loyalty between officers (Kleinig, 2001).
Conclusion
In the United States, calls and movements for equal agency and treatment of a minority demographic have been met with counter-movements that either actively work against that demographic or shift widespread attention (and thus concern, empathy, and support) to a different group. This pattern of competitive victimhood is demonstrated in the relationship between Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter, in which the latter movement seeks to stall and criminalize the activities of the former to reinforce and reaffirm the esteem of its members. Of vital importance is both the rhetorical and physical power at play between the two movements, as both factors work to delegitimize and devalue BLM while emphasizing the high moral standing of Blue Lives Matter.