This bumper sticker is saying a lot without saying much at all. I can see the possible comedic intent, but I’m more horrified by it than amused.
The sticker says “All Lives Splatter,” a play-on-words with the Black Lives Matter and responding movements such as Blue Lives Matter and All Lives Matter. Under it is an image of a car in motion of deliberately hitting three people. The caption follows up with “nobody cares about your protest” speaking out against the protests that occured in the summer of 2020.
This sticker leaves room for several interpretations of what the owner wanted to portray. My initial reaction is that they were exhausted from the relevant and upsetting BLM protests crying out for racial justice in America. The “nobody cares about your protest” signals that the driver doesn’t support the BLM cause or anything involved with it. Saying “all lives splatter” means their exhaustion has hit the point of wanting to injure protesters just to silence them.
So the owner is racist, right?
On the other hand, people could also interpret this to be against all of the “__ lives matter” protests, especially those in response to BLM. Although it seems unlikely that this was truly the intention, the owner might be projecting that they are over the abundance of protests entirely, wanting to resume their ignorant lifestyle uncaring about whatever injustice or belief people are fighting for.
Although it is somewhat ambiguous, the sticker shows that the owner has some take on the protests that happened at the time. It is obvious that the owner is against protests, whether it is specifically the Black Lives Matter protests or the entire institution of protests. It signifies a level of willful ignorance that the driver does not care to see or learn about the protests. The driver would rather choose to stay in their own close-minded bubble where everything is sunshine and rainbows while people are suffering and dying in the background.
The violence, specifically vehicular manslaughter, depicted on the bumper sticker is ironic. The sticker depicting a crime that uses a car to kill people is on a car. I can only imagine that the owner thought at least once to drive into a crowd of protesters with this sticker on their car. The intent is to shut up the protests, and displaying an admittedly effective but immoral and senseless method of doing so is a dangerous exaggeration.
I’m not sure what kind of reaction the owner was hoping for by putting this on their car, but I would certainly be taking pictures of it because of how ridiculous it is.
October 17, 2022 at 4:33 pm
I am really shocked that someone even puts something like this on display. Protests are a big part of fighting for our rights when they are being threatened and to ignore what is going on is ignorant like you said.