"All lives matter" is white-speak for "shut up, n*****, I don't give a fuck about your oppression!"
"Blue lives matter" is white-talk for "haha, I'm fascist and racist. Lol."
"All lives matter" is something people started to say in response to "Black Lives Matter." It is a phrase deliberately constructed to shut down the message of the movement. It's as if someone said "save the whales" and someone else said, "Hold up! Don’t be speciesist by saying that only whales should be saved. Save all the animals."
We live in a society in which black lives don't matter. In 2012, George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin. And every white person in America came to Zimmerman's defense (presumably because of our subconscious racial bias). Zimmerman had been arrested for assaulting an officer before, and for domestic violence. And now he has been arrested many more times for violent crime, primarily for beating women. And it turned out that Zimmerman is extremely racist. Zimmerman used to have a Confederate flag logo for his twitter account, where he regularly posted misogynistic and racist rants. An openly racist gun-nut with a documented propensity to violence was unanimously defended by white people when he shot and killed an unarmed black kid.
Eric Garner was murdered by cops for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes. The cop choked him for 15 minutes, while he was handcuffed and not resisting, using a technique that NYPD specifically prohibits its officers from using (since officers had "accidentally" killed people that way before). And white people generally came to the defense of the cop. I could sit here and list a thousand similar cases, and the cops never get charged or punished.
Furthermore, on average, black people get 20% longer sentences as compared to white people when they are convicted of the same crimes and have comparable criminal histories. Drug laws are extremely racist. Marijuana, heroin, and crack cocaine were specifically criminalized in order to justify throwing more black people in jail. Harry Anslinger of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, now the DEA, and John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s Domestic Affairs Advisor, both exlplicitly stated that the reason for their anti-drug policies was to control the black population. And crack cocaine has a minimum sentencing requirement, whereas powder cocaine does not; and the only reason for this is that crack cocaine is the form used primarily by black people, whereas powder cocaine is more common among white people; so this law is a form of institutional racism.
Schools are funded by property taxes so that black communities, which have lower property values, end up with underfunded schools and a lower quality of education, which contributes to perpetuating the cycle of poverty in black communities.
All of this demonstrates that we live in a society where black lives don’t matter. When whales were dying off at a disproportionate rate to other species, it justified asserting that we need to do something to “save the whales.” When black people are systematically oppressed, it justifies asserting that “black lives matter.” It was bad enough that right-wing media tried to paint Black Lives Matter as a terrorist group. They weren’t. And, unlike the Alt-Right, Black Lives Matter as a movement embraces principles of non-violence. But all the white people, offended by someone pointing out that racism (both racist sentiment and structural racism) is still a problem in our society, felt the need to silence the cry of “black lives matter!” with the counter of “all lives matter” and “blue lives matter.” The cry of “black lives matter” always implied “black lives matter too” and it was meant to remind people of the routine injustices and regular racism encountered by black people every day.
If women were being disproportionately targeted by police and shot on a regular basis and someone started a protest slogan saying “womens’ lives matter,” no one would have thought to pop off with “well actually, all lives matter.” The fact is that the phrases “all lives matter” and “blue lives matter” were intentionally concocted to silence a movement that is seeking racial justice. Given the context, I think it’s pretty clear that there is a latent, often subconscious, racial bias that motivates people to say such things. I also think it is impossible for anyone to grow up in our society without acquiring racial prejudice. All people have some sort of racist sentiment―some more than others, but everyone has it. Even black people have implicit bias. Studies have shown that black people have an implicit bias against other black people. That's how prevelent anti-black racist sentiment is in our society! That being said, I really do think that saying “all lives matter” or “blue lives matter” is inherently racist given the context.
I'm in the same camp as everyone else. I recognize that I have an implicit racial bias too. I honestly thought Zimmerman was in the right when he shot Martin, because I let racial bias twist my interpretation of facts. I was wrong. I've also come to recognize that racism is still a major problem and that most of the people I interact with on a regular basis are racist. I'm not condemning people for having racist sentiments. I'm just pointing out that they are there and that we need to come to terms with that. America has a white supremacist problem.
"There's a bad man in everyone, no matter who we are. There's a rapist and a Nazi living in our tiny hearts."—AJJ (People II: The Reckoning)