“____ lives matter”

There is a lot that rides on how one fills in that blank these days. In the wake of the George Floyd killing, Black Lives Matter was a rallying cry by the many who saw in this incident yet another example of the racial inequality that exists in general in our society and that is exemplified, most terribly, in the way police officers exercise lethal force. Blacks, they point out, are much more likely than whites to die when they encounter a police officer, and black parents are much more worried than their white peers for the safety of their young adult male children should they be stopped by the police. For many others, however, the black lives matter movement ignores the fact that all lives matter, that nobody should unjustifiably lose their life.We should not single out a particular group, blacks, to rally behind and instead we need to seek justice for anyone, black or white, who wrongly loses their life at the hands of a police officer. The trial and conviction of Derek Chauvin, they point out, is an illustration of how the justice system should work in securing justice for all lives. Most police officers, they argue, are doing their job as they are supposed to, and they do so while taking on all the risks involved in patrolling the streets. After all, this line of reasoning concludes, blue lives matter just as much as black lives.

Wading into these waters is fraught with the emotions and political divisions that have become intensified over the past 15 months. Many who claim that “all lives matter” feel that they are being painted as racists if they don’t get behind the appeals of those who support the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Similarly, many who are shining a light on systemic racism in our society do indeed feel that those who claim “all lives matter” are simply tone-deaf to the realities of race relations in today’s society. It is no wonder that emotions are easily triggered, and as a result it is challenging if not outright impossible to build a bridge of civil discourse between the various ways we fill in the blank: “_____ lives matter.”

In my forthcoming books, I have taken an approach that may shed some light on the issues that are involved here. To put it simply, both sides are right to an extent, all lives matter and black lives matter, but it is because both sides are wrong to some extent that we have the chasm that civil discourse finds so difficult to bridge. If certain tendencies are pushed too far, then it is wrong both to rush to the conclusion that all lives matter, assuming in the process that black lives are taken care of when we concern ourselves with all lives, and it is wrong to say that black lives matter, assuming that all lives are better off if we take care of black lives. These mistaken tendencies were pointed out by Plato, in his dialogue Philebus, where Socrates voices the concern that ‘the wise men of the present day make the one and the many too quickly or too slowly, in haphazard fashion…they disregard all that lies between them’ (17a). Stated in Plato’s terms, the people of the present day rush too quickly to the “all” of all lives matter and to the many particular groups and people, including black lives, and ‘disregard all that lies between them.’

What Plato, through Socrates, calls for us to do instead of rushing to the one and the many is to discern the structure of relevant phenomenon and let that be one’s guide. To clarify this point, Socrates offers the example of music. While a musician strives to compose beautiful music, or exemplify the nature of the beautiful (the One form of beauty for Plato), they must do so through a potentially infinite variety of sound combinations. The key, therefore, as Socrates puts it, is to get to the point where ‘you have grasped the number and quality of the intervals of the voice in respect to high and low pitch, and the limits of the intervals’ – that is, when you have grasped the limits beyond which ‘the intervals of the voice’ cease to be good or beautiful – and ‘when you have thus grasped the facts [these relevant limits], you have become a musician’ (17d-e). The same is true for speaking, Socrates notes, for though the sounds that pass ‘through the mouth of each and all of us, is one [for it shares in the One nature that allows us to identify it as a sound], and yet again it is infinite in number…that which makes each of us a grammarian is the knowledge of the number and nature of sounds’ (17b). For both the grammarian and the musician, therefore, what they grasp is neither one or many, but is between the two—it is a structure or grammar of relevant facts or limits that then guides the grammarian and the musician as they set out to speak or compose music as the best they can.

To see the relevance of Plato’s arguments to the issue around all/black lives matter, we can turn to the famous biblical parable of the lost sheep (Matthew 18: 10-14). As the parable goes, ‘a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.’ Interpreted in light of the black lives matter movement, the lost sheep is a sheep in danger, and the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine behind, not because they do not matter, but because they are not in danger; similarly, black lives matter is to be of particular concern and focus not because non-black lives do not matter, but because black lives are at greater risk and danger than non-black lives. What is important here is precisely the issue of being in danger—that is the relevant fact that guides the shepherd’s actions, much as the nature of the sounds and sound intervals guided the grammarian and the musician, and it is what should guide us with respect to black lives as well.

What then is the mistake that has led to the chasm concerning the all/black lives matter issue? In short, it is a failure to discern the dangers that lie between the concern for the needs and demands of particular groups on the one hand (e.g., blacks, women, LGBTQ+, etc.), and a concern for principles of justice and equality that are to be applied universally and irrespective of the groups and individuals that are affected by their application. What we need to be alert to then are the relevant limits to two tendencies, meaning the tendency to mask the oppression and harm done to particular groups and individuals by cloaking this harm in principles of equality and justice, such as a universal principle of meritocracy where the poor are seen simply as lacking what it takes to succeed; and the relevant limits to the tendency to secure the needs of particular groups, needs that may in turn mask the harms done to the social cooperation and cohesion necessary to attain the public good. Like the good shepherd and the lost sheep, or like the good musician, we ought to become aware of the limits to our actions, the limits where what is good becomes dangerous and harmful. This is no easy task, but then again it is no easy task becoming a good musician either.