Top 10 #BlackLivesMatter Memes

Black Lives Matter as a Movement of Emotional Narratives and Memes

The Black Lives Matter movement has progressed through emotionally connecting stories, deceptively strung together narratives of truths and half-truths which leave out vital information which would contradict their narrative, and most of all perhaps through memes.

Now it should come as no surprise to those in our generation of short attention spans and constant stimulation that a simple message in a meme can communicate far more than even this video perhaps. But that's exactly the world we live in.

Let's take a look at a few memes that have been used by social justice advocates to promote the Black Lives Matter movement. So here's the first meme. It looks like it's a fireman and he's explaining to a bystander his actions.

He says, well I think that all lives matter. We should care exactly equally at all times about everything. So he takes his fire hose out and he sprays it onto a house that is not on fire. And he could spray that water onto the house next door which is on fire and it's within his power to put it out but he chooses not to.

And as he does so he proclaims that all houses matter. This is a popular one and I guess it's clever in a ridiculous sort of way. It's really pigeonholing someone who says all lives matter into a straw man in which they would defend giving services that are not needed to one demographic while ignoring another demographic which needs those services.

But really what people are saying when they say all lives matter is that it doesn't matter if you're red, yellow, black, blue, green, polka dotted or striped. If you're in a house and it's on fire the fire department should come and try to put it out.

The ambulance should come and if there's someone that's hurt they should service that person. The police should come. If there is criminal misconduct the police should go after those criminals. And so when there's a tragedy or a police shooting or a crime of some kind that takes place really the most important factor is that all life is valued irrespective of color differences or ethnicity, gender, orientation.

You pick whatever external quality you want. All lives should matter. And so that's really nothing close to what you're seeing portrayed in this meme. No one would defend offering services for people that don't need them and then denying them from people who do.

In fact all lives matter that slogan really goes against that whole concept. And equality before the law would go against that whole concept. But this is an attempt to vilify those who say all lives matter.

Straw Man Analogies About All Lives Matter

Here's the second meme. It is a picture of the Twin Towers over another picture of the Twin Towers and it says never forget the Twin Towers. It's got a red circle around them. Then the next picture though has the same it's the same photo but red circles are around all the surrounding buildings but not the Twin Towers.

And so those buildings that receive minimal damage that were not damaged at all somehow those buildings should matter just as much as the Twin Towers. And of course it's a sarcastic font showing the ridiculous nature of someone who would say all buildings matter.

And of course this is another straw man. It's an attempt to paint someone who believes all lives matter into a corner where they're defending something that they don't really believe in that's ridiculous like this.

The problem though once again is that someone who says that all lives matter is really saying that those who have had a crime committed against them even if it's by a police officer matter by nature of the fact that they are human.

And there were two episodes ago I actually went over a number of examples of white people quote unquote who were victims of police brutality but you never heard about it because it didn't really fit the media narrative.

And so when people say all lives matter they're saying that anyone who suffers because they're a victim of a crime even if it's by a police officer they matter too. And so to put it into this analogy if there is another building that is different maybe it's not as tall maybe there's a you know different outward characteristics of some kind but it's a terrorist attack occurs there and people's livelihoods are lost people's lives themselves are lost it's perhaps a national tragedy because it's against symbolically a particular nation well hey that matters too.

And of course most people believe that and immediately when that happened there were connections drawn between what happened to 9 -11 and what happened at Pearl Harbor even though they were different scenarios but they tended they both shook the national conversation because people were just in shock that another country would do this another group of people would do this and of course people died livelihoods were lost and it was symbolic.

And so this is another ridiculous kind of meme that misses the mark doesn't understand what all lives matter is really saying. Here's the third meme and this has gone around a lot. I think I've seen this more than any of the other ones but originally I guess it was by this guy Adam Campbell and he said my personal interpretation of black lives matter verse all lives matter.

Bob is sitting out at the dinner table everyone else gets a plate of food except Bob. Bob says Bob deserves food. Everyone at the table responds with everyone deserves food and continues eating. Although everyone deserves food is a true statement it does nothing to actually rectify the fact that Bob has no food.

And it's interesting the president of the Southern Baptist Convention just recently used this same exact internet meme. Southern Baptist we need to say it clearly as a gospel issue black lives matter and and by the way let's not respond by by saying oh well all lives matter.

Of course all lives matter but I've heard it described this way say you're in a group or with a group at a restaurant and and the waiter brings the food to everybody except for one guy at your table your friend Bob.

And so you say to the waiter hey excuse me Bob deserves food and somebody at your table corrects you to say no no all of us deserve food. Well that's true but you're missing the point. Bob is sitting there by himself without food.

I think the best way to deal with this faulty analogy is to expand it. Let me show you what I mean by that. Let's look at some charts here. Uh chart number one is homicides 2005 to 2015. This is put out by International Business Times.

You can check out the link in the info section if you'd like. And here are the numbers. Black on white homicides. So killing someone here black people killing white people 5 ,294 incidences between those years for white people killing black people it was 2 ,331 incidences.

And now before I show you the next graph and explain it I need to say one thing. I said this two videos ago but I'll say it again I don't like looking at these numbers necessarily because I just don't think they always ask the right questions.

We're not looking at regions we're not looking at other factors that would motivate this kind of behavior. But the world we're living in right now seems to only care about one thing black people white people.

And the way that they interact with each other and what kind of disparities exist between each other. So I'll play that game for a moment although I don't like that game I don't think it's fair to say that black people are a certain way because in some inner city demographic it's that way.

I don't think it's fair to say white people are a certain way because in some impoverished areas where there happens to be white people they're a certain way. I just don't think that's a right way of thinking about any of this.

But critical race theory has taken over just about everything and so we're going to play that game for for a minute and just do some comparisons to to make a point. So if there is a disparity that exists here on the first chart it's that more black people are killing white people than white people killing black people.

Here's another chart. This is interracial violent crime incidences 2018 from the bureau of justice link is in the info section if you care to look at that and you can see that again when we expand it to more than just homicides there's a great deal more of incidences of black on white than white on black crime.

I mean it's not even close the disparity gets even even more. So when we look at that let's look at the next chart. This is unarmed police shootings. It's put out by the Washington Post. This is between the years of 2015 to 2020.

So Washington Post not a conservative publication at all but this is their estimation of the amount of people who have died. Black people 1 ,298 in police shootings white people 2 ,476. And you know you might say that.

Well they of course you know there's more white people than black people. So that makes sense. Well that would make sense. Except for when you start looking at the percentage of black violent crime arrests in 2018 put out by the bureau of justice you can find the link in the info section verse the percentage of black inmates.

That was 2017 Pew research and the black population. And so I'll explain this. You have a chart here with a percentage of crime arrests in the United States robbery assault weapons violent crime. Well when you when you tabulate it all out there are 37 .4 percent of the violent crime arrests among black people.

So that's that's a higher percentage than their population. Their population is only 13 .4 percent. And if you look at the prison statistics there's actually only 33 percent of inmates are black. And so why why is it that there are more violent crimes by black people.

But there's less percentage of inmates and they're certainly much less percentage of the population. If you look at that. And then you go back to this chart and you look at the unarmed police shootings and you see that there's more white people killed than black people.

Then it actually paints a different picture. It would seem that the disparity actually is against whites because whites are not involved in at the higher rates of crime and yet they're being shot at higher rates.

So how do we explain this. And and so there are people out there I'm sure that could take all of these things and they could use them to further a narrative that there's some kind of white racism out there.

Here's I'm going to just tell you before we get back to the memes here's the bottom line. Here's here's what I think is going on and where we should focus if we really believe black lives matter. Right violent incidences against black people.

Here's three bits of information you need to be aware of. 70 .3 percent of the violent incidences against black people in 2018 according to the bureau of justice were by at the hands of other black people.

Only 10 .6 percent were from white people. In other words black people in the vast majority of cases are killing their own in violent incidences. 36 percent of abortions are of black babies. That's another interesting statistic.

If they only make up 13 .4 percent of the population. Why. Why is it that 36 percent of abortions are in their communities in their demographic. Here's another statistic that might help make sense of some of this unwed birth rates vary strongly by race in the united states.

This is a chart that was compiled I believe by the heritage foundation with information from the center for disease control and prevention. And of course you see that white non-hispanic at 28 .6 percent of unwed birth rates.

Black non-hispanic at 72 .3 percent. 72 .3 percent of the babies born to to black people in the united states are born in single parent households. That's absolutely staggering. So let's go back to this meme for a moment and let's expand it a little bit.

Based on what we just learned it's not that there's one table in which bob isn't getting food. It's that there's a number of restaurants and a number of tables and a number of waiters. And what black lives matter wants to convince people of is that bob isn't being served because the waiter is racist.

The waiter is discriminating against bob. Well we don't know that that's not proven most of these incidences where police shootings take place you can't prove what was going through the policeman's head at the time.

We don't know whether it was racially motivated in some way or there was some other reason that the police decided to act in an unjust manner. But the bottom line is that it's not only black lives dying at the hands of police that matter.

It's black lives that are dying at the hands of abortionists. So let's say there's another restaurant and maybe the people at these tables can represent uh black babies. And they're all they're. None of them are getting served their food.

Well do those black lives matter. How about um a restaurant in which uh the food is stolen before it can even be served. The waiter did all the all that the waiter could but it's stolen by other people of the same demographic.

Well does black on black crime matter. If black lives matter then those things should matter as well. And maybe there's some other underlying conditions which could contribute to some of these um really greater problems because black people are dying at greater numbers in those circumstances.

But let's get back to just police violence. If we're just looking at police violence we can we can look at the same restaurant and we can say wait a and they're not serving others as well in the same restaurant.

In fact it seems like uh there's a lot of white people who are not getting their food as well. How come those those people don't matter either. Um they're they're also not getting their food. Is it racism that's motivating that.

Or is it something else. Is it something else. And so here's the real thing that people who say all lives matter are trying to say they're saying all those who have not received their food matter all of right.

Not the people who have received the food all of those who have been the victims of crime matter regardless of their external qualities. That's called equality before the law. And that's what people are trying to communicate.

Who say all lives matter. Meme number four. This is jesus walking with a sheep around his neck and it says if you had a flock of sheep and one went missing you'd leave the flock in safety and go after the one that was in danger until he was safe doesn't mean you love the flock less.

Just that the lost sheep needed you more hashtag black lives matter. And i included one other little cartoon where jesus is going after the the lost sheep as a shepherd and you have all the other sheep holding up signs that say all sheep matter.

Well let's go to the actual passage. This is in matthew chapter 18. And here's what it says in verse 12. What do you think if any man has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray does he not leave the 99 on the mountain and go and search for the one that is straying.

If it turns out that he finds it truly i say to you he rejoices over it more than over the 99 which have not gone astray. So it is not the will of your father who is in heaven that one of these little ones perish.

So what's going on in that passage. Well jesus is talking about those who are his sheep. So these are actual christians these are believers. And he's saying if one of them goes astray so if one of them is sinning the the good shepherd is going to go after that sheep and rejoice when that sheep has has been restored into the fold.

Now now let's look at this uh meme again. This meme is trying to parallel that with black lives matter. So it's saying if if there's a certain demographic which is being discriminated against by police brutality let's say um we need to focus all our attention on that because everyone else is fine.

It's just this one demographic that's really having the problem. And of course that's not true. We just looked at some statistics that show this. Um but even maybe more important than that uh this actually is not a parallel to the story that we see in matthew chapter 18.

Jesus here is seeking to restore someone who has violated the law or they're caught in sin of some kind. So this would be a criminal trying to restore a criminal. Or if it's a police officer who's done something wrong it would be trying to restore that police officer if they're truly a christian into grace.

And so this analogy would actually work better this way you could say that police officers or corrections officers that are trying to restore someone into civil society who's a criminal they're kind of like jesus here they're going after not everyone but those who are breaking the law to try to restore them.

But of course that would actually be the opposite of the narrative black lives matter wants to communicate. Here's the next meme. It's also about jesus. Jesus says blessed are the poor preaching the sermon on the mount.

And someone says no jesus blessed are all people. And of course jesus then gives kind of a death stare. He throws up his hand looks at him and is kind of saying with his eyes what are you talking about.

And and and so the the implication here is jesus is saying that the poor lives matter. And then someone's saying all lives matter rich lives matter too. And then jesus is not too happy with that. Well if we go to the passage once again matthew chapter 5 let's go to verse 3.

It says blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And if you keep reading in the there's all sorts of other internal qualities that receive a reward of some kind. So someone who's poor in spirit that's someone who they have empty pockets they'd have nothing to offer god and they know it.

So they're humble. And god's going to reward the humble. He resists the proud he gives grace to the humble. That's the point. But someone who takes this verse and then tries to pack it into the black lives matter movement is trying to say no jesus is talking about something physical some quality where someone's poor because they've been oppressed i guess in some way and they should be blessed because of this oppression that's outside of their control.

And then to ignore that to say well all people matter. Well that's just that's just being a jerk that's just being so horrible. But that's not jesus's point at all. Jesus is talking about something internal.

He's talking about an attitude. He's talking about qualities that are virtuous the character qualities not something like ethnicity which you can't change. He's talking about things that can be changed.

And so this just fails to meet the the mark. Once again it corrupts scripture. In order to make a point here's a meme which should honestly be offensive to christians but i fear it's mostly quote-unquote christians who are posting it it says he should have just obeyed the law and it's a picture of someone with a thin blue line flag on the back of their shirt looking at jesus being crucified and saying well he just he just should have obeyed the law.

Now here's the problem with this. Jesus was actually innocent. He broke no laws. And so the parallel being created here is you have the guys today who are supporting the police. Uh they are somehow they would have been supportive of the roman soldiers and look i don't think the police are always right.

I don't know anyone who thinks that but in general uh the idea the concept of police in an age when people want to disband the police and defund it entirely is a good institution from god. And so in that sense we should be supporting the police.

It's actually a christian thing to do. But jesus dying on the cross is not parallel to the victims of police brutality or police self-defense which gets mislabeled brutality who happen to be black. It's just not the case in most of these cases there's something that's criminal going on or there's probable cause to suspect something criminal is going on.

And i know that a lot of these victims have been identified now as almost martyrs. They they their characters even if they have a long arrest record cannot be questioned. But the fact is they're not jesus.

And and this idea that jesus died because of the system and the system just discriminated against him isn't even necessarily true. It wasn't that they were discriminating against jesus because of some outward marker.

It was actually because um he was threatening the religious establishment of the time because he was god. He was preaching a message which threatened them. So it's more ideological than it is some kind of outward characteristic like they did.

He just romans just didn't like him because he was jewish. In fact it was the romans who were more trying to keep jesus from dying pilot didn't want this to happen. But he of course washed his hands of it when it was the jewish leaders who wanted jesus to die.

So it was from within his own quote-unquote community. And so you know this this has all sorts of problems when you try to parallel jesus dying on the cross to victims of police brutality. But that doesn't stop those who are advocating for black lives matter in many cases.

Unfortunately here's another meme of jesus and it says destruction of property is not a valid form of protest. And then it shows jesus in the picture overturning the money changers at the temple. This meme is essentially trying to defend those who have been looting murdering destroying property ripping down historical artifacts etc and saying that what they're doing is actually similar to what jesus did in overturning the money changers at the temple which is actually blasphemy to take people who are actual criminals doing so for selfish intent selfish motives destroying property breaking god's law and then paralleling them to jesus is is absolutely wrong.

And and one of the reasons for that is because of what jesus actually says in the actual passage. So i'm going to read for you it's two verses the story of jesus in the temple. This is in matthew chapter 21 verse 12.

And jesus entered the temple and drove out the all those who were buying and selling in the temple all of them. He didn't single out certain ones because of their ethnic characteristics. He drove out all of them because they were buying and selling in the temple.

And he overturned the tables of the money changers and seats of those who were selling dubs and he said to them it is written my house. All right. Jesus is god my house. Jesus owns all this. It's his property.

Okay my house shall be called a house of prayer but you are making it a robber's den. He's calling them robbers. He's calling he's saying they're breaking god's law because they're the ones that are actually robbing.

And he's saying this is my house this is this belongs to god. So so this is jesus's house. It's his property. Um you know he is uh punishing those who are exchanging extorting people at high rates because they want to make a profit and they're not concerned about the actual goings-on of the temple and worshiping god.

If you really want to try to draw a parallel i don't recommend doing it with this verse. But if you're going to try to do it then it would actually make more sense to say that the policemen who are trying to stop robberies are more like jesus.

And that is the opposite of the narrative that black lives matter wants to promote in a similar vein. Some want to promote the looting and all the problems that are going on in regards to protesting the death of george floyd and others by paralleling it with the boston tea party.

So here's i think this might be the original one. I'm not sure but it says people complaining about rioters and looters really need to take a jump back. This country was founded a violent riot i guess it so to say on a violent riot with lots of destroyed property see boston tea party hashtag black lives matter.

And it shows a picture of the sons of liberty dressed up as native americans dumping tea. Now of course there's a there's a bigger political situation going on here. This was protesting the townsend acts.

This was actually an attempt to send a message to great britain that a political message that we do not accept the taxes that were unjustly laid upon us in regards to tea and and so they only got rid of the tea.

They weren't hurting the boat. They didn't hurt people that were on the boat. They were uh kept safe. They didn't go around boston breaking things and and i've said this before but i i personally don't think this was a good thing for them to do.

In other words when people want to champion the tea party and say oh the tea party was just that was that was really patriotic americans right there. I i don't like that as much and you can call me you know whatever names you want to call me say i'm not patriotic but um but i don't think that's like the highest form of protest that took place in the american war for independence or leading up to it.

And i just don't think we should look at it favorably in every sense of the word. But it is certainly not anywhere close to the magnitude of what we're seeing with the riots that absolute absolute senseless burning of businesses.

I mean at least in this case it's it would be like if you know we'll use the word bob again bob bob wronged you in some way and you go to bob's house and and you wrong bob back. Right. That's not that's revenge.

And that's not correct. We shouldn't do that. But it's another thing to say i'm gonna go to greg's house because of what bob did and i'm gonna burn greg's house down or something like that. That would make no sense.

But that's what the rioters are doing. They're just burning everything black owned businesses even so uh so don't try to parallel these two things. It's just it's not honest. Meme number nine. Let's talk about history.

Looting is bad. Why stealing something. Or why steal something that is not yours. And the map of course is of africa as an empty hole that has been mined bare. And all the goods and the riches are in the united states of america and in europe.

And of course this is one of the most ignorant memes that i can think of. I'm not sure if it's supposed to just represent the slave trade or just uh colonialism in general. But the problem with this meme is that only five percent of those that came over on the transatlantic slave trade wound up in the united states.

That means about 95 percent wound up in south america central america uh the caribbean islands and and and so that's all being ignored. Uh you know they're they're clean. There's nothing wrong there. They're.

They're as i guess pure as the driven snow when it comes to uh slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. And of course another area that you'll see bear is the middle east and the muslims have been engaged in slave trading.

They're still engaged in it to this day in africa. They were engaged in it before the colonial powers from europe even arrived on the ivory coast and so um so to to view that section of the world as not bearing the brunt of the guilt for this is also ridiculous.

Um a second thing though that needs to be pointed out when you're looking at this meme is that none of the benefits which the continent of africa has received from the western world are tabulated in this at all.

So none of the technology um none of the uh even the ideas which have made their way into africa um that have affected their political situation in any way. None of the riches going in that direction the infrastructure investments none of that makes it into this at all.

And so this is a completely a dishonest meme in every sense of the word at least historically. And finally we are at meme number 10. Here's colin kaepernick and a picture of him. It says you mad at me for kneeling mad at rosa parks for sitting mad at mlk for marching mad at muhammad ali for not fighting your vietnam war but not mad at yourself for slavery and indian american genocide.

Now i do not know who decided to use the word indian that is so politically incorrect in this meme but they they ought to have the mob against them for using that term. Here's the deal with this meme.

I don't know anyone that fits this description. I don't think i've ever met anyone maybe one or two people that i never had the discussion you know long enough to tell whether they would feel this way about it.

I don't know but um i don't know why would we would be mad at ourselves as americans as people as quote-unquote white people descendants of europeans um even those who are descendants of slave owners uh slaveholders.

I don't know why they would be mad at themselves for slavery when they weren't participating in it. They haven't done anything. It's people that came many years before them. So so this from a christian standpoint this doesn't make any sense.

Uh the son shall not bear the iniquities of the fathers um and indian american genocide. In his words i didn't use that term. Um again why why would we why would i feel responsible for what the u .s army did in the western region of the united states uh in the later part of the 1800s.

Why why would that be something that i would take responsibility for and then be mad at myself for. Um as far as being mad at rosa parks mlk and muhammad ali. I i don't. I'm not mad at them. I don't know who is mad at them.

This is. These are things that happened in history and most of us are grateful for some of the um the the outcomes of some of these stands. I don't know about the muhammad ali one as much. But uh certainly rosa parks and mlk.

So i don't understand who he's talking about. Uh in this uh unless it's it's just it's just rage. It's just straw manning. It's just tarring and feathering a group of people um for believing something that they don't actually believe.

So whoever made this meme is just it's ignorant. It's not accurate. So these are the the memes that i wanted to share with you all these are the top 10. I asked some people to send me memes. Uh some of those i hadn't seen most of them i had.

And as you're talking with your friends and having discussions and seeing these memes hopefully some of the analysis that you've looked at in this video will help you have some of those discussions. And so god bless you have a good.