If we believe that man is nothing but matter, which is the logical consequence of the materialism of the day, I see no problem with affirming that black lives DON’T matter. It is actually tautological.
If we do not hold that man is a supreme being, made imago Dei, then man only becomes a human being based on the arbitrary standards that other human beings have decided upon. Once again, this is an a priori fact.
Given the pro-abortion stance of this country, the “rights of humanity” are not conferred to a first trimester fetus, or for that matter a second or third trimester fetus (in all cases). In some cases, the rights of humanity are not even conferred to a fetus/child/baby/infant/half-person/ bundle of matter, whatever we wish to call “it,” when it has partially emerged from its mother. Even further, some, like Princeton’s celebrity ethicist Peter Singer, have argued that we should, in certain cases, delay declaring these balls of atoms “humans” until they have lived for a full month outside of their mothers.
Whatever standard is chosen, being that it is man-made, it will be, in essence, arbitrary and susceptible, not to the slippery slope fallacy, but certainly to the runaway train fallacy. A first trimester fetus does not have the cognitive ability of a one month old. On the same token a one month old does not have the cognitive faculties of a five year old, and a five year old lacks the development of a graduate student…etc., etc.
Mankind is now in the business of deciding when a thing becomes a human. When we grant this molecular mass the “rights of humanity,” we are endowing them with both positive and negative rights. They have the right not be killed or raped, but they also lose the right to kill or rape others. They are, without their consent, entered into a pre-determined social contract. They have rules they must follow that they did not have a part in designing or implementing. This is all wildly arbitrary, but these are the rules to the game we are playing.
Under the current pretenses of this game, what is the problem with claiming that black lives don’t matter? We created the guidelines, why can’t we make an amendment to the made up rules to the game? If we are the arbiters that can confer the rights of humanity on things, why can’t we take those rights back? What if the majority voted to remove a certain group from the game? Those in that group would be deemed outside of humanity and their lives would in turn not matter. There would be no moral impetus to even pretend that they do.
It seems to me, that one who is pro-abortion has no basis to claim that black lives matter, or any life intrinsically matters.