Opinion: Don't reduce the conversation to hashtags

In a rhetorical arms race, no one wins. 

#BlueLivesMatter, a relatively recent iteration of the buildup in nationwide pathos since the #BlackLivesMatter slogan caught public attention, exemplifies this frustratingly familiar phenomenon. 

The former hashtag — like the latter — is associated with an organization. 

In this case, with Blue Lives Matter. On its webpage, Blue Lives Matter describes itself as a media company. The webpage criticizes Black Lives Matter, framing its goals as “the vilification of law enforcement.” 

More directly, the webpage lumps “the lies of Black Lives Matter, the media and politicians” together as the ideological force behind several police officer murders.

Blue Lives Matter’s organizational rhetoric, name and eponymous hashtag, then, react to (and, in the case of the former, directly attack) Black Lives Matter. 

So supporting Blue Lives Matter — by wearing a Blue Lives Matter t-shirt, for example — could be interpreted as ignoring and suppressing the legitimate criticisms of police practices Black Lives Matter has fought to bring into the public consciousness. 

Does support for Blue Lives Matter rhetoric equal opposition to reforms like the demilitarization of police, greater protections from warrantless surveillance and protection of a right to record police actions?

It depends on who is wearing the shirt.

When rhetoric employs deeply held identities to galvanize public support, a hidden cost is often rational discussion of the merits and downsides of policy suggestions. People inadvertently support organizational ideologies they do not necessarily agree with in the process of identifying with, well, one of their identities.

Our identities (racial, cultural and professional) make up a large component of the social glue that binds us together. Wearing a Blue Lives Matter t-shirt probably says more about one’s social position than it does one’s political stance.

As Huffington Post contributor Jonathan Russell pointed out in a July article, it is wrong for Blue Lives Matter supporters to fully equate the social identity of police officers to the deeper and much more permanent racial identity emphasized by Black Lives Matter. 

It is not necessarily wrong, though, to view the two social identities as comparable: if just for the fact that they are social identities, and thus very important to us as humans. 

Along those lines, it would be unwise to assume someone advertising “Blue Lives Matter” cares less about the lives of police officers than someone advertising “Black Lives Matter” cares about the lives of black people.

This is not to defend Blue Lives Matter as an organization. 

Indeed, the importance of social identity merely makes it more frustrating that Blue Lives Matter has chosen to up the rhetorical ante and frame things as a full-scale conflict of identities between police and black people. 

Ramping up the emotional content of the discussion over policing to 11 is a surefire way to reduce rational discussion surrounding it. 

Blue Lives Matter versus Black Lives Matter, as fiery rhetorical poles, point almost logically to a twisted, zero-sum, debate: a debate over which human lives — weighted by identity — are worth more. 

At the end of the day, our honest positions in such a debate would depend more on who we identify with socially than it would on any pure ideological worldview. 

It would depend on our social bonds of race, kinship and profession.

Fortunately, our relatively liberal government and society mostly allows us to avoid having to make those dark determinations. It leaves room for others’ deep-rooted self-interests and social biases, as well as our own.

Thus, while Blue Lives Matter rhetoric is inflammatory and troubling, it only poses a real threat to the positive steps the Black Lives Matter movement has taken when we allow it to be divisive.

We should view individual expressions of it with empathy.