Though I recall a lot of people treating the statement as if black lives were not included in all lives. Including ascribing intent on people, even if those people clarified themselves.
So to answer your question: the reason many didn't move on is because they didn't want to understand, which is pretty damning to moving on.
The "black lives matter" slogan is based in the idea that people in America have been treated as if their lives didn't matter, because they were black. People in America were not treated as if their lives didn't matter due to being white, so no such a slogan would be necessary for any such a reason.
"White lives matter" is trolling, basically.
Which people will interpret as a support for the far-right. You may not intend that, but that's how people will interpret it, and your intentions are neither here nor there. You may not care what people think, but your neighbours will. "Did you hear Jim's a racist?" "Do we really want someone who walks around chanting 'white lives matter' to be coaching the high school football team?" "He claims he didn't mean that, but of course that's what he would say." "I don't even know what he said exactly, but everyone's saying he's a racist, and I think the kids are just too important to take any chances."
Welcome to living in a society. 'Moving on' is not a choice for you, it's a choice for everyone else. And society is pretty bad at that, historically.
> What do you mean what does it mean? It means the opposite of white lives don't matter.
> The question is really simple; even if someone asking it had poor motives, there's really no room in the simplicity of that specific question to encode those motives. You're not agreeing with their motives if you answer that question the way they want.
Words can and do have symbolic weight. If a college professor starts talking about neo-colonial core-periphery dialectic, you can make a reasonable guess about his political priors. If someone calls pro-life protesters 'anti-choice', you can make a reasonable guess about their views on abortion. If someone out there starts telling you that 'we must secure a future for white children' after a few beers, they're not making a facially neutral point about how children deserve to thrive, they're in fact a pretty hard-core racist. [0]
You can choose to ignore words-as-symbols, but good luck expecting everyone else to do so.
[0] Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words
Those people might as well join the far right.
> your intentions are neither here nor there
If intentions really are neither here nor there, then we can examine a statement or question without caring about intentions.
> Do we really want someone who walks around chanting 'white lives matter' to be coaching the high school football team?
Well, no; it would have to be more like: Do we really want someone who answers "yes" when a racist asks "do white lives matter?" to be coaching the high schoool football team?
> you can make a reasonable guess about his political priors
You likely can, and yet I think the answer to their question is yes, white lives do matter, and someone in charge of children which include white children must think about securing a future for the white ones too.
> but good luck expecting everyone else to do so.
I would say that looking for negative motivations and interpretations in everyone's words is a negative personality trait that is on par with racism, similarly effective in feeding divisiveness. It's like words have skin color and they are going by that instead of what the words say.
Therefore we should watch that we don't do this, and likewise expect the same of others.
Uh huh, this is definitely a distinction Jim's neighbours will respect when deciding whether to entrust their children to him. /s
"Look Mary Sue, he's not racist per se, he's just really caught up on being able to tell people 'white lives matter'. World of difference! Let's definitely send our children to the man who dogmatically insists on saying 'white lives matter' and will start a fight with anyone who says 'yeah, maybe don't?'."
> I would say that looking for negative motivations and interpretations in everyone's words is a negative personality trait that is on par with racism, similarly effective in feeding divisiveness. It's like words have skin color and they are going by that instead of what the words say.
And I would say that you're engaged in precisely what you condemn - you're ascribing negative personality traits to others, merely on the basis that they disagree with you. (And not for the first time, I note.)
I would also firmly say none of what we're discussing comes anywhere near being on par with racism. (Yikes.)
Finally, I would say that a rabid, dogmatic insistence on being able to repeat the rallying cries of race-based trolling (your description), whenever one chooses and with absolutely no consequences, everyone else be damned, is not actually anything to valourise or be proud of. (Or is in any way realistic. You can justify it six ways till Sunday, but going around saying 'white lives matter' is going to have exactly the effect on the people around you that that rallying cry was always intended to have.)
>> You likely can, and yet I think the answer to their question is yes, white lives do matter, and someone in charge of children which include white children must think about securing a future for the white ones too.
I have nothing to say to someone who hears the Fourteen Words, is fully informed about their context, and then agrees with them. You're so caught up in your pedantry you're willing to sign up to the literal rhetoric of white nationalist terrorism. Don't be surprised when you realise everyone else is on the other side. And they see you there. (And that's based on the generous assumption that you don't already know very well what it is you're doing.)
On the basis that they are objectively wrong. I mean, they are guessing about the intent behind some words, and then ascribing that intent as the unvarnished truth to the uttering individual. How can that be called mere disagreement?
> being able to repeat the rallying cries
That's a strawman extension of simply being able to agree with the statement "white lives matter", without actually engaging in the trolling.
> I have nothing to say to someone who hears the Fourteen Words, is fully informed about their context, and then agrees with them.
If so, it must be because it's boring to say something to me. I will not twist what you're saying, or give it a nefarious interpretation, or report you to some thought police or whatever. I will try to find an interpretation or context which makes it ring true.
No risk, no thrill.
I actually didn't know anything about the Fourteen Words; I looked it up though. It being famous doesn't really change anything. Regardless of it having code phrase status, it is almost certainly uttered with a racist intent behind it. Nevertheless, the intent is hidden; it is not explicitly recorded in the words.
I only agree with some of the words by finding a context for the words which allows them to be true. When I do that, I'm not necessarily doing that for the other person's benefit; mainly just to clarify my thinking and practice the habit of not jumping to hasty conclusions.
Words can be accompanied by other words that make the contex clear. I couldn't agree with "we must ensure a future for white children at the expense of non-white children" (or anything similar). I cannot find a context for that which is compatible with agreement, because it's not obvious how any possible context can erase the way non-white children are woven into that sentence. Ah, right; maybe some technical context in which "white", "black" and "children" are formal terms unrelated to their everyday meanings? But that would be too contrived to entertain. Any such context is firmly established in the discourse. Still, if you just overhear a fragment of some conversation between two people saying something similar, how do you know it's not that kind of context? Say some computer scientists are discussing some algorithm over a tree in which there are black and white nodes, some of those being children of other nodes. They can easily utter sentences that have a racist interpretation to someone within earshot, which could lead them to the wrong conclusion.
What do you mean what does it mean? It means the opposite of white lives don't matter.
The question is really simple; even if someone asking it had poor motives, there's really no room in the simplicity of that specific question to encode those motives. You're not agreeing with their motives if you answer that question the way they want.
If you start picking it apart, it can seem as if it's not obvious to you to disagree with the idea that white lives don't matter. Like it's conditional on something you have to think about. Why fall into that trap.