I'd like to start this post with two statements. Number 1; I am not here to explain to you why black lives matter. If you need that explaining to you, well, I don't have the time for you. Number 2 is that I am a white female, I do not experience this oppression first hand, and that is why I am not going to write about it in a personal way. However, what I am seeing both online and in traditional media is slightly scaring me, and so I am here to discuss why I personally believe that #blacklivesmatter has to be the trending hashtag, not #alllivesmatter. 

Let's start with some stats;

Black suspects are killed twice a week in America by white policemen.

An analysis of FBI data over 7 years shows that one quarter of the 400 annual deaths are white on black shooting. 

18% of black suspects were under 21, in comparison to just 8.7% white suspects.

In Ferguson in 2013, 92% of all people arrested were black. The community as a whole is 63% black. 

The Urban Institute estimates that white on black homicides in regards to Stand Your Ground laws are 354% more likely to be ruled justifiable than white on white.

In short, in America at least, black lives seem to mean less to officials. 

So, do all lives really matter? Of course they do. But that's not the point. 

The entire point of the #blacklivesmatter hashtag is to fight against the oppression that people face just for their skin colour. It is to show to the people oppressing and the people standing back and doing nothing that they are fighting against this regime in order for their lives to actually matter in the eyes of the law. #alllivesmatter is about white people not feeling included in a fight that was never theirs to begin with. It does not introduce segregation, it shows the fight for equality and it needs much more support as a movement from everyone. It is to prove that black lives DO matter, and that we as a global nation cannot keep letting racist crimes, be it by the police, courts or ordinary citizens, keep going. 

I hope this may have cleared things up for you if you didn't understand or see the difference between the two tags beforehand.