Comic Strips

I feel like you're misinterpreting my point. I'm saying that optics matter in social movements. You can't expect society to go out of its to understand the nuances behind your slogans and terms, you have to do the work to find slogans that conveys your messages in ways that society understands and accepts. This is a vital part of activism, and small changes can yield in big results. If the goal is to advance the cause then this should be a no brainer move.

You make the argument that a change in optics implies erasing the original message or adopting or that anybody criticizing bad optics is engaging in bad faith. However both of these things are not true. Let's take the Black Lives Matter slogan that you brought up as an exmaple. You seem to believe that there's a dichotomy in slogans to choose from, either it's "Black Lives Matter" or "All Lives Matter". However, this dichotomy is false. There's obviously many more options.

One of the primary criticisms of the BLM slogan is that it's too vague on it's meaning. A lot of people, regardless of your opinions on their motivations, believe that this slogan implies that other people's lives matter less or that black lives matter more. To you it may seem obvious what it means, but the people who bring up this criticism do have a valid point as evidence by all the opposition to it. If your movement is getting nonstop criticism about the language it uses, then that's a strong indicator that there's an inconsistency in the movement's optics.

Therefore it would be wise to examine where those might be and make adjustments. In this case, the BLM movement doesn't need to adopt the All Lives Matter slogan because that's also flawed for all the reasons you've brought up, but they could do something simple like "Black Lives Matter Too". That's all it takes to clarify the meaning and kill the criticisms about intent behind the term. Will this stop racists from being racist? No, but it does give solidify the movement's position. The truth is that there a lot of people who associate or disassociate with movements over things like this, and their support could be the difference between real change and no change. The idea here isn't to win over the racists, but the people who are hesitant to support a movement even if they agree with the cause.

It's something that's simple yet effective. If a movements cares more about the preservation of bad optics over the advancement of its cause, then where does its values lie? Keep in mind, movements that are too stubborn and rigid to adapt will be fizzle out and be left behind in favor of ones that do.