On that fateful November day in 1963 when Jackie Kennedy’s prim pink dress was given a fresh coat of her husband’s brain matter, a live microphone found its way to the mouth of Malcolm X. Brother Malcolm had previously been harshly critical of the slow roll toward civil rights legislation on the whole, and when a few bullets brought down the president, he had this to say: “He never saw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon.”

The backlash from these remarks pretty much ended his run with the Nation of Islam — and they’re generally terrible, so maybe a net gain, in spite of his eventual assassination — because the insinuation of his statement was this: white people have had a boot on the necks of black neighborhoods for so long, it was only a matter of time before they got their just desserts. It didn’t make a bit of difference that JFK made moves toward racial progress, or that Malcolm’s sometimes-rival MLK Jr. was in JFK’s ear regularly, or even that a white guy had pulled the trigger. What mattered, basically, was that karma is a bitch, and that at the end of the day, JFK was just another brick in the wall.

It’s hard to see the news, Black Lives Matter, etc. and not think of that statement. We’re living in an era of an obvious and troubling duality: bad policing of black people is visible and shocking, and the backlash is something that no civil and clear-thinking person is comfortable with. Black people are dying at the hands of police officers, which — c’mon, let’s be honest — is nothing new. But the retaliatory action, in places like Dallas and Baton Rouge, is usually only tangentially related to the shit that happened before.

There’s a lot to parse through, so let’s agree on a few things:

Police are necessary, and generally good. It’s a hard job, and not one that a lot of people would choose to do. Black people are justified in being angry at the treatment they’ve endured personally and culturally. Modern media has made both seem more dangerous to the other, and this is totally fucked up.

From the beginning, Black Lives Matter, as a movement, was doomed for failure. Not because it was wrong-minded, or because it was unorganized, or because it was corrupt. It was doomed for failure because it was scary as fuck to white people, and that discomfort would sully the larger point to people who would generally agree with its mission. There would obviously be versus statements, like “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter.” Like either of those arguments were ever in question.

But way before there was a BLM movement, there was a question: do we really recognize that black lives matter? It wasn’t a wild thing to ask, and our country as a whole has a hard time owning up to that. I mean, where do you even begin? Here? Here? Or here? It isn’t a fake thing, and most honest white people would rather be gay than black. Think about that. Gay, you guys?!

So let’s look at the stats, from some pretty vetted sources: black people are no more criminal than I am, and police are safer than they’ve ever been. And then there’s the shitty reality: that maybe, just maybe, we’re just seeing worse cops and more senseless deaths than we’re willing to shoehorn into our angry brainspace.

So let’s think: how or why did BLM fail? Did it fail? Because even if you agree with the sentiment — which I do, absolutely — you can’t really call it a success. Not when the leadership has splintered, when the message has shifted from progress to something approaching vigilantism, and not when there can be reasoned arguments about what “matters” even means.

I guess that the question really is, does visibility alone qualify as a victory? By that count, BLM wins. But in the larger game, where anything approaching progress happens…well, the jury is still out. And the jury is mostly white.

Blame is such a weird thing. The other weekend, my future wife and I went rafting down a potentially deadly chute; we didn’t die, but all throughout the trip, it was understood that if we did die, I’d have blood all over my hands. Blame is usually picked out before it has a reason.

So let’s blame black people. Blame them for runaway dads, blame them for shootings, blame them for a tired example of “how we live” that they aren’t living. Let’s discount the things that we actually love about black culture, ignore that the most dignified president in history is black, or just gloat over having “a black friend.” It’s disingenuous, it’s gross, and it’s everywhere. We — “we” being white people — can’t pick and choose which black lives matter, and then cast blame on the ones who apparently don’t.

Because we do blame them, and then their lives become a talking point, something impersonal and nonspecific. And then, they become meaningless headlines or something for Nixon to concoct something against. Decades after that, after untold ridiculous and trivial incarcerations, and which are now easily accessible, we still cling to some sort of cage match between whether “blue lives” or “black lives” matter more.

People, that isn’t and has never been the argument.

When Muhammad Ali died a few weeks back, it was important to note that he’d been born under the name “Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.” He was the son of a man who’d been named after a white abolitionist who had freed the first Cassius’ father, if you can follow all that. When he dropped Clay for Ali, he was, in the most literal sense, dropping his slave name. He was also dropping the name of someone who’d fought for his freedom. And there, my friends, is the disconnect. He’d staked a claim over his place on this earth. Don’t ask him what matters, because only he knows.

Black Lives Matter doesn’t need to be capitalized. It should matter to you, it should matter to cops, and most importantly, it matters to them. All anyone wants is to matter, and when black people are either being killed or removed from their families at rates that don’t make any reasonable sense, it perpetuates the fear that the cycle will continue. Because it will continue, as it seemingly always has.

Blue lives matter. Of course they do. The two ideas aren’t mutually exclusive, and virtually no one would disagree. But don’t give me that “All Lives Matter” garbage, a superiority statement posing as accommodation, because it means that the only side you’ve chosen is your own.

If the chickens haven’t come home to roost, then I truly don’t know where they’ve gone.