Candice Carty-Williams

'All that Black Lives Matter nonsense' an older man I recognised from the review supplement scoffed. 'All lives matter.'
'What ?' I asked him, blinking. I took a secret deep breath.
'What about the lives of Latinos, of Asians, the lives of - I'm white, does my life not matter?' he continued.
'I'm not... suggesting that the lives of other ethnic groups do not matter,' I explained, gobsmacked that I had to explain. 'I don't think that any part of Black Lives Matter even hints that other lives are disposable?'
'Well, when you put the lives of some and not all on a pedestal, what else are you doing?'
'It's not putting black lives on a pedestal, I don't even know what that means,' I said, my heart beating fast. 'It's saying that black lives, at this point, and historically, do not, and have not, mattered and that they should!'
I looked first at Gina, then around the room to see if anyone was going to back me up. Instead, I was met with what I'd been trying to pretend hadn't always been a room full of white not-quite-liberals whose opinions, like their money, had been inherited.