This past summer, mostly during the state-mandated quarantines, the Black Lives Matter movement, a social movement advocating against racially motivated violence against black people, became extremely prevalent and of course caused some retaliation. One of the subgenres of retaliation against this movement is “Blue Lives Matter.”

In simpler terms, Blue Lives Matter is basically stating that police lives matter. When people say this, they are retaliating a phrase that means a minority group’s lives matter, and they want to bring awareness to unjust discrimination against that group of people. They retaliate mostly because they don’t understand the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” Some people assume that the phrase is saying Black lives matter more than other lives, but in reality the movement just wants to bring awareness to the discrimination against Black people. Some people also think that the movement will take rights away from them, but bringing equal rights has never taken away rights from anyone else. When women were given the right to vote, it didn’t make it harder for men to vote.

 The fact of the matter is police officers face no discrimination. Police officers are the ones creating and acting on the prejudice against minorities. A great example of this is Tamir Rice. At age 12, Rice, who was African-American, was playing with a toy gun that even had the orange tip indicating it was a toy gun, yet he was still shot almost as soon as police officers arrived on the scene. Police reported that they shouted out to show his hands before shooting him, but on the dash cam recording the car was still in the process of stopping when Rice was shot. The caller even said that the gun was “probably fake.”

 On the other hand, Dalton Potter, a white, middle-aged male in northwest Georgia, who was suspected of already killing one person and on the run for 72 hours, was safely arrested with no injury. A countless number of black people are killed by police every year, yet white people can threaten police with a gun and not be harmed at all. Kyle Rittenhouse, a white 17-year-old male, was able to carry an assault rifle, kill two people and wound a third, and police officers protected him. He is now facing multiple homicide charges, but he was able to carry such a dangerous weapon out in the open without being shot and killed. Black people make up only 12% of America, but they make up almost 25% of deaths by police shootings according to northeastern.edu. This is so disproportionate that it’s obvious there is at least some difference between how cops treat white and black people.

Police officers are police officers because they chose that job. They chose to put their life at risk to protect others. Black people on the other hand, don’t choose their race. They are black 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. Police officers are only police officers from when they clock in to when they clock out. Of course they are more likely to die because they are disproportionately put in more dangerous situations than someone who works in a safer position.

 Even though I disagree with the statement “Blue Lives Matter,” doesn’t mean I don’t care about police officers who have died in the line of duty. They tried to protect people but died trying, and I truly respect that.

 But, when people try to use that phrase to undermine a movement that is trying to bring awareness to a disproportionate amount of black people dying at the hands of our legal system, then that’s when I can’t stand for it.