Black Lives Matter-What does it mean and why do so many people continue to have a problem with it?
With recent events going on, I find myself having to explain, discuss, and debate some of my colleagues, on the stance of the Black Lives Matter (or BLM) movement. Apparently, those whom I've engaged in discussion with regarding this movement for some reason despite my continued explanation, continue to believe this movement somehow elevates the concerns of the black community above everyone else. Again, BLM's platform extend beyond black nationalism which in fact this organization like the NAACP has become multi-ethnic.
According to BLM's website:
"Black Lives Matter began as a call to action in response to state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism. Our intention from the very beginning was to connect Black people from all over the world who have a shared desire for justice to act together in their communities. The impetus for that commitment was, and still is, the rampant and deliberate violence inflicted on us by the state."
Some more:
"We are expansive. We are a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement. We also believe that in order to win and bring as many people with us along the way, we must move beyond the narrow nationalism that is all too prevalent in Black communities. We must ensure we are building a movement that brings all of us to the front.
We affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. Our network centers those who have been marginalized within Black liberation movements.
We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.
We affirm our humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.
The call for Black lives to matter is a rallying cry for ALL Black lives striving for liberation.
Source:https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/
Why are some against BLM?
According to a website conversation.com the backlash towards BLM stems from the emergence of White Identity politics which had spurred "All Lives Matter." According to the article:
"All Lives Matter” erases a long past and present of systemic inequality in the US. It represents a refusal to acknowledge that the state does not value all lives in the same way. It reduces the problem of racism to individual prejudice and casts African-Americans as aggressors against a colourblind post-civil rights order in which White people no longer “see race."
Source:https://theconversation.com/the-backlash-against-black-lives-matter-is-just-more-evidence-of-injustice-85587
According to Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s book "Racism Without Racists," under the "White understanding," talking about systemic racism is itself racist, because it conjures into existence “racial divides” that are invisible to Whites who believe themselves to be free of prejudice. But I wonder where the continued misunderstanding concerning BLM really comes from? Is it willful ignorance or an individual attempt to merely not acknowledge the issues of people in the black community?
According to BLM's website:
"Black Lives Matter began as a call to action in response to state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism. Our intention from the very beginning was to connect Black people from all over the world who have a shared desire for justice to act together in their communities. The impetus for that commitment was, and still is, the rampant and deliberate violence inflicted on us by the state."
Some more:
"We are expansive. We are a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement. We also believe that in order to win and bring as many people with us along the way, we must move beyond the narrow nationalism that is all too prevalent in Black communities. We must ensure we are building a movement that brings all of us to the front.
We affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. Our network centers those who have been marginalized within Black liberation movements.
We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.
We affirm our humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.
The call for Black lives to matter is a rallying cry for ALL Black lives striving for liberation.
Source:https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/
Why are some against BLM?
According to a website conversation.com the backlash towards BLM stems from the emergence of White Identity politics which had spurred "All Lives Matter." According to the article:
"All Lives Matter” erases a long past and present of systemic inequality in the US. It represents a refusal to acknowledge that the state does not value all lives in the same way. It reduces the problem of racism to individual prejudice and casts African-Americans as aggressors against a colourblind post-civil rights order in which White people no longer “see race."
Source:https://theconversation.com/the-backlash-against-black-lives-matter-is-just-more-evidence-of-injustice-85587
According to Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s book "Racism Without Racists," under the "White understanding," talking about systemic racism is itself racist, because it conjures into existence “racial divides” that are invisible to Whites who believe themselves to be free of prejudice. But I wonder where the continued misunderstanding concerning BLM really comes from? Is it willful ignorance or an individual attempt to merely not acknowledge the issues of people in the black community?
Comments (178)
Quoting Anaxagoras
I was irked by it the first time I read or heard the phrase (probably after (or maybe just before) the Eric Garner lynching by unindicted NYPD); the activists missed - dropped? - the obvious and necessary qualifier "also" from their anti-racist cri du coeur which should have been, more aptly, BLACK LIVES ALSO MATTER. 'BLM' is ripe for co-option and parody because it's a categorical, or unconditional, assertion. Cat's out of the bag, so to speak, we're now stuck with more of a slogan than a thesis.
Yes. Because, I suspect, confronting racism & other social injustice "issues" plaguing (mostly) non-white communities, are perceived by whites as personal indictments - not for the well-documented, jurisprudentially enshrined, legacy and manifest status quo of systemic racial discrimination & terrorism - just because they are white.
Like after "9-11", the oft-repeated question (vis-à-vis jihadi terrorists) that made the rounds with media pundits & talking heads: "Why Do They Hate Us?" Or how the Black Panthers were/are officially designated "a terrorist organization" and yet the KKK still are not. 'White Supremacy' is manifestly tolerated by many (most?) whites because it doesn't threaten them - white people as such - or the caste-priviledges of Whiteness in America (& Europe); it's the defeated (treasonous, pro-slavery) Confederate Flags, Statues, Monuments & Generals' Names everywhere to honor a dishonorable "heritage" and "lost cause" in order to prop-up bloated White Priviledge grown so cripplingly obese from centuries of cannibalizing Black Brown Yellow & Red bodies that Whiteness now can barely stand or trundle or even wipe itself (e.g. MAGA tRumpers, dog-whistle (dixiecrat) Reagan Republicans, boll weevil/blue dog Democrats). The plea "Stop killing us" threatens their ancestral prerogatives to do just that with impunity and without troubling their KKKhristian consciences.
Lastly though (just riffin' here mind you), perhaps more fundamentally, many white people (seem to me/us to) feel threatened merely by discussing "racism" because they do not believe the survivors of white terror and their continually brutalized descendents only want "Social Justice" and "Equality", but, what we're really after instead, I believe whites believe, is revenge. We say "Reparations", they (most?) hear "revenge" (i.e. "Race War").
:mask:
Quoting Anaxagoras
I think there's a bunch of stuff going on. We find contrarians in the IDW looking for an opportunity to oppose 'woke dogmas' and get martyred by the inevitable backlash they'll get online. We find conservatives who associate BLM with Marxism and generally oppose any large-scale institutional and cultural reform. Then there's ignorance and self-absorption, which can be explained in terms of a culpable failure to develop a loving gaze (as Murdoch might have put it) as well as a relatively innocent lack of exposure to relevant statistics, history and experience.
Take Eric Weinstein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETcq7qqPhow. He seems well-meaning in some ways, but I find his reaction perplexing. He seems to think that the BLM movement is a superficial symptom of some broader, more universal psycho-social disease, and that this 'chaos' could have erupted at any number of weak points in our flagging system.
Even if it is true that 'the conditions were ripe for some kind of explosion', that doesn't reduce the legitimacy of the concerns being voiced, limit their urgency, or imply that those concerns don't have unique motivations (i.e., imply that there aren't race-specific issues). What does he think should happen? That we campaign for something universal but hopelessly nebulous? Or don't campaign for anything at all, and perhaps simply work on our own individual spiritual condition?
Maybe I'm not being fair to his analysis, I haven't gone into it. I was just recently exposed to his rants and they've been floating around my head. I'm not quite sure what to make of him, to be honest. He doesn't seem disingenous, but if you zoom out, it's hard for me not to see his reaction as insufficiently sensitive to the injustices here.
I'm not justifying or defending any of these beliefs, but you asked so...
Most people seem to feel some injustice has been done to them if they've not been judged by some variant of the maxim "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need", by which I mean "I wasn't able to", and "they didn't deserve/need it" are considered justification for inaction against injustices.
Inequalities also mean that most people are also in a permanent state of guilt about those less fortunate than themselves, and resentment of those more fortunate than themselves.
The upshot of these two principles is that people are constantly looking to assuage their guilt (using either "I wasn't able to", or "they didn't deserve/need it") without compromising their feelings of just resentment about those above them.
Scalar issues cause little opposition because they fit well into this mode. The fight against poverty, for example. There's always someone poorer than you, but there's always someone less poor who should be doing more. One can acknowledge the issue and act according to the maxim because there's an argument over 'how poor', acknowledging the issue neither commits you to a specific strength of action, nor sets you apart from those who might otherwise 'get ahead of you' in the inequalities race.
Binomial issues, however, do not fit this mode well. There's no discussion about 'how white you are'. White privelidge is not measured like income, its assigned like a badge.
The "from each according to their ability" part seems subverted, if you're white you have maximum ability, if you're black you have minimum ability. There's no scale, so people feel scared to commit to judgement about their role in solving the issues.
The "to each according to their needs" part is also subverted because if you're white you have no needs (insofar as this issue is concerned), and if you're black you are 100% the victim (again, just insofar as this issue is concerned). So again people feel afraid to commit, in this case because they're scared their just resentment of those above them will be taken away (the poor white can no longer justifiably resent the rich black).
As I said, I'm not justifying these positions, just giving my opinion as to the answer to the question.
I think it isn't unreasonable to bring up establishment opposition to black civil rights leaders in comparison. Reagon/Bush "tough on crime" racist dog-whistling, the entire war on drugs with Clinton, this really wasn't that long ago. These aren't interpretations of crazy far-leftists, we have admissions by those campaigns that they knew exactly what they were doing. Speakers against the practice get called disruptors and get assassinated or locked up. It's hard to not draw parallels between these practices and how Trump reacts to BLM.
Many individuals and groups who spoke out against clear racism had absolutely no business being killed or locked up in a democratic country. It is more of the same in this regard, now I don't like BLM for many reasons but if BLM weren't a racist, leftist, destructive group would it matter? Maybe not, any disruptors fighting against racist policies, who favour justice over order, maybe they'd receive the same opposition.
However, as I already said, BLM are far from the ideal group from my perspective. Anyone who opposes identity politics is going to have a hard time liking BLM, anyone who hates the way racial groups get characterised and prejudiced against is going to struggle. BLM is responsible for some pretty terrible things and the list is growing. There are many reasons for those who know US history and hate racism to NOT support BLM.
I just don't know whether if the group wasn't BLM but instead a moderate group that said enough's enough and laid down the facts in a way that I'd 100% support. Would that group be accepted or would people still complain about how "all lives matter" and say that the US should still be tough on crime and while the system isn't perfect, it's not that bad either.
US law/justice needs a total and complete overhaul, the situation is absolutely absurd but I wonder how many people are willing to accept that. US exceptionalism is quite astounding.
As far as many people are concerned, rational discussion is already off the table at that point. I'd imagine a lot of rationalists and sceptics would fall into that camp.
Just a guess.
Apparently some people feel that if the government, as representatives of the State (legal) entity the Netherlands, apologises, that then they are being blamed for the sins of their forefathers. But this is not the case. It's an apology on behalf of the State who existed back then and exists now and is the same legal person. An apology will go a long way when we can admit that the fucking "Golden Age" of the Netherlands was build on slave labour and slave trade (plus robbing resources and killing indigenuous people).
How hard is it to say "my forefathers were assholes and I'm sorry that happened to your forefathers"?
poor and lower income communities all my life. The experiences of overt racism that BLM and this particular speaker at the protest claims exist against black people Is something that just does not exist at the ground level. Being a person of color it was bizarre that the vast majority of the crowd were white University students.
And to be Frank the speaker was patronising and racist and just appealing to emotion rather than making any sense. I find the dogmatic nature and ideology of a group that is in itself emphasising one race whilst blaming another race for its ills Is disingenuous and purely political and opportunistic. The generic sweeping implication that ALL black people have some sort of homogenous experience and that that they are all targeted or discriminated against carte blanche is ludicrous.
And the word racism is trotted out at every Instance of supposed discrimination by a group that is based on race?! Common sense has left the building.
While many people applaud BLM for bringing awareness about the maltreatment of blacks, I believe it's way too focused on a single race issue, taking no notice of other important political and environmental problems.
I think history teaches us that oppressed people have always protested that their lives matter, with good reason as they're treated as if their lives did not. I tend to agree with @180Proof that willful ignorance plays a part in the outrage against the phrase.
Quoting 180 Proof
BLAM!!! :ok:
Quoting 180 Proof
Whites have a lot of angst. All that virtue signalling and stuff from one side and then delirious fears from another side.
And yes, your right, some Americans are very fearful of the fact that "whites" aren't going to be a majority soon (meaning 30 years or so from now). For the genuine racists this is the biggest fear. Of course what they don't understand at all that there isn't going to be a new majority: hispanics aren't going to be 50% and surely african americans won't be a majority. But who cares about little things as facts. All they need to see is a documentary from South Africa about the crime there and think "OMG, it's going to be here THE SAME!" That's the new racism. Just like the ludicrous idea of Europe (and especially Sweden) being soon Islamic.
Hard to believe that anyone inclined to willfully misinterpret BLM is interested in a thesis, regardless of how well reasoned it may be. Also, BLM is a strong statement, whereas BLAM sounds weak.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1278324681477689349[/tweet]
A group not affiliated with BLM was chanting the pigs in a blanket thing, if facts matter.
The phrase “Black Lives Matter” is a self-evident truth. The group Black Lives Matter was founded by “trained Marxists”, so hopefully we can differentiate between the phrase and the “movement”.
What BLM pursues is a conservative goal. They demand black people should not have their constitutional right to freedom be violated through excessive force, racial profiling and over-policing of their communities by the police. Defund the police is the policy proposal they believe best reaches that goal. One wonders why people keep objecting to the goal and you'd expect conservatives and Republicans to support it as well. So there's a lot of resistance against a basically conservative demand to respect constitutional rights by Republicans. Is it coincidence Marxists founded BLM instead of Republicans? Or do Republicans perhaps not care about constitutional rights? Or, as I suspect, do they need their racist white base to win any election at all?
Justice sacrificed for power.
They also want to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another”. They also want to “dismantle cisgender privilege”. I can support the premise that excessive force and racial-profiling are wrong without supporting some well-funded, far-left identitarian group who I believe care more about their activist bona fides than about “black lives”.
Where is that quote from?
Edit: let me rephrase, are you sure 1. you quoted them correctly (hint: no) and 2. that you understand what they're saying once you do quote them correctly?
Which are also self-evidently good things no less than the proposition that black lives should matter.
But sure, something something Marxism bad mmkay? :lol:
https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/
As it continues with fostering a queer-affirming networks, I don't think this has anything to do with marxism, but just with modern leftist/progressive views, which obviously aren't the main agenda. (And no, I don't believe that this is some "transformed" cultural marxism, just as I believe in that racism is what it meant a decade or two ago.)
Yeah its the entirely not-crazy idea that care and support should extend beyond the bounds of the immediate family. And of course the other Super Scary Marxist Agenda cited in that post was opposing transgender discrimination. How sinister- what will those diabolical cultural Marxists (lol) think of next?
Not to me. When self-avowed marxists start disrupting families through their make-believe “villages”, I see trouble. No activist network can substitute for family or community, and no one needs to support a well-funded protest organization to fight against racism. So use your hashtags and fist emojis to your heart’s content.
Quite so. Indeed, much of what you have to say tells us about you rather than about how things are.
It ain't nice.
I’m sure your view of me is completely fair and just.
Money isn't everything. Tell me who spent more and lost?
It's a myth that politics is dictated entirely by money.
And here I thought I was being reasonable, the only sane person in a madhouse.
Elections might not but legislation most definitely correlates with who had the money to influence the process.
I'm not going to argue about that. The point was to address the claim that @NOS4A2 made in which no one needs to support BLM because they are well funded.
That's what all the inmates think.
Why does BLM need our support if they are well funded?
Well if you frame it that way it doesn't seem like a bad idea to support BLM.
Politics is way too confusing. I'm out. :smile:
Heh, no doubt. :grin:
Your really can't read can you? They stated "We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement". And why would that be? Maybe because 1 in 3 of black men end up in jail at some point in time and the nuclear family is too often not the reality?
They even state in the paragraph before it "we make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children." They're not anti family and they're not trying to replace it but to support them through wider networks, such as, ironically, communities that you actually mention in the very next sentence.
The rest of that post is just silly. Nobody needs to support a well funded political party either. Oh wait.
Like the Devil reading the Bible, as a Finnish saying goes.
The victims of right wing fascism were mass transfer of wealth from most people to the rich elite for the past 30-40 years or so. The victims of left wing fascism so far are a couple of statues and a bit of property damage. I guess I'm all for left wing fascism then.
VS
Quoting Benkei
It's nice to see things in perspective. :clap:
But from another perspective it seems like the left wants to destroy American artifacts from its lovely history. Sacrilege! :scream:
Fascism is just a swear word these days. Remember the "Islamofascists" of the Dubya years.
Quoting Benkei
If you like this time, how much worse would it have to get to change your mood? Because things may be worse in the fall. I cannot see the elections anything else but polarizing, nasty and a huge confusion. Of course there is the possibility that Trump is so bad that he actually unifies the country in opposing him. Yet, well, might not happen.
The standard length of unemployment benefits is six months in the US and the record unemployment started in late March, so come November and Americans will have a problem. States now having to close restaurants and etc. because of the rampant pandemic doesn't look like the US heading for a V-shaped recovery. This all will have an effect on what we call the "culture war" and likely even on the protests against police brutality.
I don't like the times (global warming, pollution, over fishing, the PRC, mass extinction of species, Russian meddling, Trump and his racist base, I could go on) but I do like what BLM stands for, which is what Trump was referring to with his fascism comment.
How on Earth does this constitute an "objection"? The fact that black lives don't matter to some people is the whole point and the entire reason BLM exists. This is like saying that the fact that some people commit murder is an "objection" to the moral principle that you shouldn't murder anyone.
I object to that because I believe in the right to murder. :rofl:
Just remember that many were arguing prior to COVID-19 that the US would have the best ability to respond and tackle a global pandemic.
The Constitution says "all men created equal". Literally anyone in a state position who acts against this is in violation of Color of Law and is an enemy of the State which can bring up to the death penalty. Now let's seperate the real from the ideal for a second. It doesn't always work like that. Which begs the question, what would they want if not this system in place functioning properly? Chaos? No. That's cancer. You wouldn't want that anywhere.
Without talking like a "racist" this planet has been wrought with unimaginable suffering. Even relatively recently. Entire cities of Asians were nuked killing the better half of 100,000 people. Whites were the most enslaved, granted usually by their own.. in Rome a redhead slave would fetch top dollar. Basically it was a common practice. There's nothing "wrong" with black people, in fact you can just ask around they are far from "inferior".
Most people just know what they read but I'd bet there's a higher up people who just have it out for the US government because all of a sudden they can't have "muh Game of Thrones expansionism" using people's whose lives would be worth more than yours if you ever really got in the way. Prove me wrong.
Sure. But to convince a murderer or racist that their values are wrong, it is not sufficient to present the opposing value. You have to give them a reason why their value does not achieve a higher goal that they have. By drawing attention to a higher goal that we share, then argument becomes relevant, as we can say that valuing black lives achieves that goal more effectively than not valuing black lives because x,y,z.
Who argued that but US persons?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUO6pjwFOo&t=311s
They disrupt the western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement because 1 in 3 black men end up in jail? Can you quote them on that or are you just making that up? Don’t bother, I already know the answer.
Anyone can go look at the quote, which doesn’t include anything about men in jail. That’s because you made it up.
Because:
The origins of black American culture are different from the origins of white American culture, and the nuclear family evolved from European family norms. A model that only permits this one type of family is dishonest about the many cultures that came together to make our country.
Historically, white slave owners actively worked to prevent black slaves from forming this kind of family unit. Later, segregation, redlining, generational poverty, and other effects of systemic racism made, and still make, a greater challenge for many black families vs. white families to form the nuclear family structure. White culture demands that black culture conform to that structure, but puts obstacles in the way, while maintaining the narrative that black people are less valuable and their family and community structures are less legitimate than their white counterparts.
Because of their view from outside of white culture, black Americans have a valuable perspective of the nuclear family, with profound criticisms that everyone should listen to.
Our culture is structured so that the nuclear family is expected to exist in isolation, without a network of support from neighbors and relatives. Even the strongest and fittest people find that way of living stressful, because that’s not how humans are intended to live. Two people working as a team cannot wear every hat—caregiver, breadwinner, housekeeper, groundskeeper, chef, program director, etc. Two people alone live close to the wire—just one unexpected job loss or medical crisis away from disaster. And because they are supposed to be everything the other person needs, they often resent one another and end up with an unhealthy distribution of power, labor, and leisure. But they’re expected to fake it and smile, and keep passing on the lie that the nuclear family is the only and the entire way to be family.
And because that nuclear family is so enshrined, people who exist outside of a nuclear family are devalued and their families are treated as if they aren’t “real.” And people who exist inside of a violent or otherwise broken nuclear family are under pressure to keep the family unit together at all costs—that is, visibly together, even though it’s non-functional.
Yet with all the modern American mythos built around the nuclear family, where that model disintegrates, people keep on parenting and people keep on partnering up. Partnership, parenting, and community are core to the expression of human life. We should celebrate, support, and participate in healthy partnership, healthy parenting, and healthy community, no matter the forms they take.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-BLM-committed-to-disrupting-the-Western-prescribed-nuclear-family-structure
Can you admit you misrepresented BLM on that point?
Can you provide a source for your implied claim that BLM want villages to replace nuclear families?
Alright, I was just reading through this paper.
"[The BLM organization/movement] disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
Earlier they say this:
"We see ourselves as part of the global Black family..."
It seems to me that while they're not seeking to immediately eliminate the nuclear family, they are seeking to expand it - and arguably weaken it. This last part about "weakening" is controversial, it's gonna depend where you stand politically, but they themselves use the term "disrupt." Previously, socialist or communist regimes have sought to destroy the nuclear family through rhetoric involving its expansion (e.g. the village raises the kid.)
https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/
What does Karl Marx have to do with an activist movement with no centralized local leader?
The phrase "Black Lives Matter" can refer to a Twitter hashtag, a slogan, a social movement, or a loose confederation of groups advocating for racial justice. As a movement, Black Lives Matter is decentralized, and leaders have emphasized the importance of local organizing over national leadership.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter
When the founder calls her and her co-founders “trained marxists”, I take them at their word.
Then why would you say “replace”?
I don't think they will begrudge you your nuclear family. It seems to me everybody is welcome provided they support freedom and justice.
In what way does the beliefs of a movements founders not “have to do” with the movement? I would think it would have quite a lot to do with the movement, so please explain that ine to me sir.
Because of the decentralized nature of the movement. The founders dissolved their own leadership.
What is a trained Marxist?
They couldn’t replace it if they tried. My contention is that they are preaching dangerous nonsense, none of which has to do with police violence or racism.
God knows.
Is it scary?
Quoting NOS4A2
I think you are overstating the dangers even if you believe it is nonesense.
Seriously? You don't just have a problem with black lives mattering, you have a problem with an oppressed people having support networks?!? Or is this like a "gay marriage will ruin marriage" thing where you believe that black people having support networks will somehow make your white family (I'm confident that you're white) dissolve?
This whole debate is very stupid.
So now the founders beliefs have nothing to do with the movement?
If the KKK grand wizard, a self proclaimed KKK-racist, founded a movement and then decentralised his leadership you would say his self proclaimed KKK racist beliefs wouldn't be relevant to the movement? You wouldnt be suspicious of that movement?
No, it just hints at the ideological undertones of the organization.
Perhaps. But I believe family stability is important to the health, wealth, and well-being of individuals.
Okay, the founders have something do have to do with the movement. I’ll give you that.
Do you blieve that the KKK and BLM are equivalent in anyway?
None of the above.
Then in what sense do you find such support networks troubling?
It’s fine to believe that.
Quoting NOS4A2
Good.
I don’t think BLM can operate as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, namely because it isn’t an extended family or village that collectively cares for one another.
But who would have known that primary rudimentary actions to prevent a pandemic from spreading, like trying to contain it at start, wearing face masks, would become a deely political issue? Perhaps few that follow US politics closely would have forecasted that, but they don't work on the medical field. Besides, they would have had it difficult in making the argument that all the premade plans done years ago in multiple administrations would be put aside at the crucial time when a global pandemic strikes.
Okay so according to your information (whatever that is), the BLM virtual village isn't a thing. So why do you find it troubling if it isn't happening? This isn't amounting to a coherent position, even an ugly one.
I guess it's a good thing I don't respect your opinion. Like I said, I think they're preaching dangerous nonsense. Rather I think they should be championing the family as the best support network for children.
I find it troubling that anyone would preach such piffle, when the opposite might be the better cause. Does that make sense to you?
Sounds like a utopian society to me.
Well, no. I confess my first thought when I heard of George Floyd's murder was not: "This wouldn't be happening if black people cared less for one another."
But why does it make sense to you? Even if you believe that the individualistic nuclear support structure suits you, to the extent that you would not want any involvement in any kind of support network, why do you believe that it must be championed by everyone, including those in very different situations to you for whom a support network might be useful? What troubles you about the idea of people helping one another? Too commie? Black people might benefit from it? Not useful to you so shouldn't be allowed? Too reminiscent of the African village structures the idea is derived from? I'd list some positive possible motivations but I can't find any.
Quoting Wheatley
By the looks of it, black people thriving is not everyone's idea of Utopia.
Yep. A lot of people don’t give a shit about what happens to black people. They’re constantly dehumanized and called names.
Edit: here's an analogy: after the twin towers, how many people said "but why aren't you angry and sad about how many Americans kill each other in gun massacres?" I imagine not many.
No, I wouldn't say they much in common except irrelevant, generic categorisations.
Okay.
"The idea of people helping one another" doesn't trouble me, but the idea of disrupting "the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement" does. It troubles me for reasons I've already stated. And it true that it is a little too commie for my blood.
I know that the issues are different, but you'd think a movement dedicated to the welfare of black people would be concerned with a category of homicides which kill 4-5x more lives a year than police do. We're fundamentally talking about homicides here.
Second, how about white on white crime? People tend to kill people in their own communities. It's not a black pathology of increased violence amongst blacks.
There's also a rather important difference between being murdered by a criminal and being murdered by a cop; the latter isn't supposed to do it, has qualified immunity and for some weird reason is believed in court more readily than regular citizens.
There's more but it's just diversionary and distracting. If victimised men start a "no more rape by women" group, why demand they should protest against rape of women as well, because it's more prevalent? In fact, why do you feel the need to tell people what they should be worrying about?
Why? It doesn't disrupt it for you: you seemed to agree that people having such networks doesn't hurt your right to be left alone and let everyone else gft. It disrupts it for people for whom it's a problem, or is insufficient.
Quoting NOS4A2
If your ideology casts helping one another as a sin rather than a virtue, you've got a pretty rotten ideology.
Because I believe it is a bad idea. I’m not going to stop them or impede their choices, but I’m not going to support them either.
It’s a rotten lie that I cast “helping one another as a sin”.
How's the act of misrepresenting them as an attempt to make them look bad not an attempt to impede or stop them? Or do you just do that for shits and giggles?
I don’t need to misrepresent them. I can quote them directly from their website and interviews.
That doesn't sound like "troubling". It sounds like "irrelevant to me".
Quoting NOS4A2
You said you found it "troubling" and that part of the reason is it's a bit "commie". Perhaps "sin" is too conotative a word in parts of the world where communism and black people helping one another are things to be troubled about. What's a better word to describe the dim view taken of people who help one another where you're from?
Blatant misrepresentation as pointed out which you refuse to own up to. You don't have integrity or a backbone do you?
I just don’t find your opinions compelling or interesting.
Again, no one has a dim view of “helping one another”. That would be what is known as a lie where I’m from.
So you support a network of black people helping one another now?
Quoting Benkei
Are you saying that black on black violence is a result of poverty? This doesn't entirely bear out because we don't see the same homicide rates in other parts of the country with similar poverty rates.
Quoting Benkei
Yes, when whites murder they disproportionately choose to murder other whites. When homicide is done it's overwhelmingly within that same ethnic group. The reason I bring up black on black crime is because you would think an organization that is concerned with black lives should be a little more tuned into a phenomenon which is killing black men at a much greater rate than police violence.
Quoting Benkei
There are some instances where cops are perfectly within their rights to kill. If we look at instances where cops did kill in 2019 you'll see in the vast majority of those instances the subject was armed.
I acknowledge it's still a problem though, but if we had to devote our time and resources towards either eliminating black on black crime or police violence towards blacks I would honestly choose the former. Make no mistake about it, it is a discussion in the black community and it has been a discussion for decades. Why BLM pays seemingly no attention to it is beyond me.
Quoting Benkei
Alright, lets go with this example. Lets imagine a group called "Men's Bodies Matter" started a nationwide movement that solely concerned itself with women-on-male rape. I mean we're all against rape, right? But what about male on male rape, which happens more to men than women on male? Obviously women on male rape is wrong, but I think we'd both agree the explicit and sole focus only on female perpetrator/male victim would be super bizarre. I'd be tempted to call it an anti-woman movement and I'm not even much of a feminist.
Make no mistake about it, the explicit focus on some aggressors but not others is very political.
I think everyone should help one another. It’s a brilliant idea.
Great. So you support BLM's "supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another" at least in principle, even if you disagree that it exists in practise?
I'll just leave that here and say I don't feel like going through all these motions again.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Yes, I can see how you're tempted since you have been struggling with BLM as well.
I wouldn't think it's super bizarre. In fact, the Netherlands has (or had) a group solely focused on rape of men by women because it's totally unrepresented and not taken seriously. After all, men are supposed to be stronger. So no, I think it probably says more about what you've been exposed to in your life and the society you live to feel the need to judge people for standing up for an injustice.
There's always something bigger or more important, politically speaking, or we can take the nihilist approach and say it all amounts to nothing any way. Or the third way is just to listen to what people have to say.
If you are worried about black on black crime then do something about it other than telling people who are already working on combating injustice that they should fight another injustice just because to think it's more important. At the end of the day those protesters are doing a lot more than either of us.
Can women even rape a man where you guys are? Here you have to have a penis. Bloody British patriarchy, can't even rape unless you're male.
@BitconnectCarlos, Black Lives Matter only exists because certain white people with power (state power, power in numbers, power to act unjustly) act like black lives don't matter. A point of contact might be men campaigning to have men-on-men rape taken seriously as an issue, and indeed that is happening in the same countries where BLM operates. By comparing BLM to a campaign on an issue that matters less than another unchampioned issue, when in fact that issue is championed in the real world, makes it sound like black lives don't matter as much, which I'm sure is not your view. The actual analogy for the women-on-men rape cause is... White Lives Matter, which does campaign hypocritically for the visibility of lesserproblems while not just ignoring but opposing campaigns around greater ones.
Also, you might disagree with Benkei and BLM that poverty is a correlate of local violent crime, but it would be dishonest to say that therefore BLM are not concerned with the issue. I'm pretty sure hydrogen is the right approach to low-carbon vehicles rather than electric, but I'd be lying to say that therefore electric car manufacturers are uninterested in the problem.
As I'm sure you are aware, changing the subject to black-on-black crime when people want to talk about the state-sanctioned murder of black people is a common trope, and probably not one you'd want to associate with. The extent to which BLM does not, in your view, sufficiently cover local violent crime is not an extent to which people should shut up about nationwide white-on-black violence, particularly when that violence is not at the hands of some local gang away from oversight but at the hands of the actual law enforcers in plain sight who are supposed to protect people from violent crime, and particularly when they have the approval and encouragement of their Head of State.
Of course, this is a naked self-contradiction, since "the idea of people helping one another" (i.e. in our community, beyond our immediate family) is precisely what is meant by "disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement"- so one cannot accept one but not the other with consistency. Though I certainly appreciate that logical consistency is not something you're likely to be interested in either.
Unfortunately, by opposing such self-evident goods as the notion that we should care about or support people besides just our nuclear family, that black lives matter, or that transgender discrimination is bad, you're just removing yourself from serious discussions about the present political/social situation in the US. Well, not you specifically since you were never part of them to begin with, but, you know, people in general. If you lack common sense or basic decency, and you're quite explicit about it, people will be increasingly less interested in talking to or hearing from you in any serious or substantive context. Then again, points for honesty, I guess?
Prior to that families were what we would call extended, including grandparents and near relatives in a more or less settled household. The move to a smaller family unit left the elderly to care for themselves, resulting in the aged care industry we see today.
The family continues to fragment, with even the nuclear family not being small enough to survive as a unit.
The nuclear family is a symptom of a broken economic system that disenfranchises and isolates people by treating them as economic units.
They are not a good thing.
I think it’s a great idea to support others, especially those in need of family. What I don’t agree with is to do so to disrupt the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement”.
I don't like BLM but your line of argumentation about this "why only black lives" is pretty weak. BLM is a group that is focused on how the state treats black people. That doesn't mean that they don't care about every other issue that's remotely related to being black in America.
The whole "all lives matter" counterargument misses the point, it's like saying to a feminist "don't all rights matter?" Yeah, they do, but a feminist is focused on women's rights, generally.
I've recently learned what a horrifying chapter in history this is for the elderly. Fortunately, there are efforts to return the elderly to a 'settled household' lifestyle, though they may not gain widespread adoption any time soon.
I never used the "all lives matter" line of argumentation... maybe quote me where I said it before applying the position to me?
It's just data. Don't be afraid.
Er, yeah, nvm about that, what I meant was that BLM is focusing on state-related offences, you made no mention of any "all lives matter" and idk what made me think you did. Crime is obviously a problem but it doesn't need to be the only problem that gets addressed... why frame it like we need to pick one or the other?
Can you explain how they can possibly implement the extended family model while obeying the nuclear family structure requirement? Again, you seem to be contradicting yourself, twice in this case.
There is no nuclear family structure requirement. This whole thing is bullshit.
Grandparents live in your house? What's wrong with you? Two men raising a kid? What's wrong with you? Living in the same home as your niece? What's wrong with you?
It sounds more like societal norms than an actual requirement. I have nothing against BLM talking about nuclear families, but to say that nuclear families are a requirement in black communities seems like a stretch. Is the government imposing regulations that have an impact on the family structure?
In The Communist Manifesto of 1848, Karl Marx describes how the bourgeois or monogamous two-parent family has as its foundation capital and private gain.[24] Marx also pointed out that this family existed only in its full form among the bourgeoisie or upper classes, and was nearly absent among the exploited proletariat or working class.[24] He felt that the vanishment of capital would also result in the vanishment of the monogamous marriage, and the exploitation of the working class.[24] He explains how family ties among the proletarians are divided by the capitalist system, and their children are used simply as instruments of labour.[24] This is partly due to child labour laws being less strict at the time in Western society.[24] In Marx's view, the bourgeois husband sees his wife as an instrument of labour, and therefore to be exploited, as instruments of production (or labour) exist under capitalism for this purpose.[25]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familialism#Criticism_of_Western_familism
There used to be something called the ‘man in the house rule’. Not sure if that impacted family norms beyond its termination.
Quoting Benkei
The reason here is important. The devil is in the details. If you were to come up to me and be like "hey, you want to take part in this protest against women raping men due to how underrepresented this is in society I would say sure.
Contrast this with me coming up to you and being like "Hey Benkei, I'd like you to join the Men's Bodies Matter movement! Don't you believe that men's bodies matter? You do? Great! So, when it comes to protecting men's bodies our struggle is concerned solely with the epidemic of women on man sexual violence! Trust me, we're huge advocates for men here and it's important that we succeed with our mission!"
And if you were to bring up the (entirely reasonable) objection "well what about male on male aggression which claims many more victims?" I would just tell you to go away because that's not our cause. It's all about how the issue is framed.
It's interesting and I'm still trying to clarify my thoughts on this issue, but I think we'd both agree that just because a problem exists does not mean we need to form a movement explicitly concerned with its resolution. For instance, while black on white homicide is a problem (because all homicide is a problem) a movement to address this problem really doesn't do a lot of good. It's like of all the problems... why choose that one? Is this really a fair representation of the bigger issue (and it's not because something like 85% of homicides towards whites are committed by other whites.)
Quoting Judaka
BLM doesn't even address crime right now. It is focused only on certain forms of violence towards black folks - namely, state violence and vigilante groups. If you read the BLM "what we believe" statement there are 0 mentions of crime or gang violence which claim far more black lives than cops or George Zimmerman or the KKK.
So your view is: if there exists a bigger problem than X, we should not expect or campaign for justice with regards to X. Is that accurate?
No, it's not. A part of the problem is just the name: Black Lives Matter. If you want to call it blacks against state violence that's fine, but there's a disconnect with the name BLM when you have many black victims being ignored and others deified.
If the state has an active role in discriminating against blacks then it's a race issue. I'd argue that "black on black crime" is an unhelpful framing. It's just crime and of course, nobody likes crime but it's not a race issue.
BLM don't need to address every issue for black Americans under the sun. It's fine for them to stand for a particular issue with whatever strong slogan they want and there's no problem. This criticism is just superficial, of course, the majority that supports BLM is going to be against crime that hurt people (and black people) but they're separate issues.
But there isn't a disconnect, is there? The name is perfectly in keeping with the aims of the movement, given that the tolerance of murder of black people by racists is a testimony that black lives don't actually matter compared to whites. If the group was called Stop All Crime Immediately and refused to address black gang culture, that would be a disconnect.
Which just returns us to the idea that a campaign can not be specific and therefore effective: it has to be exhaustive, and therefore inactionable, if it is to be anything. I just wonder how many of your rights you'd happily cede on the basis that your gaining them did not solve the biggest problems facing your people at the time. Would you, for instance, cede habeus corpus until all crime ceases, on the grounds that it protects you only from wrongful arrest while real crime is happening all around you?
This is why the change of subject is so racist: you lay the responsibility of black gang culture on a group of people legitimately campaigning against a very real threat from their own law enforcers on the basis of what? They have the same skin colour as the black gangs. If you were consistent in this and laid responsibility for any white crime on every white campaigner against a different injustice, fair enough. It would be illogical but fair.
I support the basic aims of BLM: Police reforms and ending unjust state violence (obviously towards everyone would be ideal, but if we just want to focus on black people that's fine too.) That could be the end of the discussion; there ya go, I support BLM.
If we start prodding a little further we're now in an environment where everyone can name many black victims of police violence and essentially no white victims of police violence. The movement describes its nature/outlook as "unapologetically black" so where do non-blacks even fit in in the movement? It just seems strange to me that some black victims get basically deified while others are simply ignored from an organization which is fundamentally about black unity & black communities. Additionally, on the BLM website if you look at the aims of the movement ("What we believe") section I do think there's Marxist undertones (the co-founder admits to Marxism.)
So it's like whatever. Does everyone support the basic premises? Yes, because they're obvious beyond obvious. It's only when you start digging a little deeper...
Quoting Kenosha Kid
If someone actually cared about protecting black lives they'd take 2 seconds to look at the numbers and see that if we're talking about violence many, many times more black men are killed by other black men than are killed by whites - even racist whites.
Of course we can campaign against those racist, evil whites - it's fine! No one should support Derek Chauvin. My concern comes when out of this campaigning emerges a certain unbalanced worldview that implies that white people are the biggest threat to black men and that the way to solve this is more black nationalism.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I never really faulted BLM for this. I believe if you look on their website or atleast somewhere floating around on the internet is a list of goals for BLM. I find the movement in its most basic form to be actually really good and easy to support.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I never mentioned "who is to blame" for black gangs. I'm solely concerned here with what is actually killing black men if we're talking about violence. I'm just looking at the numbers; it's not hard to see.
I don't like BLM to be clear, they engage in racial histories, identity politics, they want to institute laws with race-specific language, I don't agree with many of their proposals, depending on who you think represents BLM things get even worse. Violence, vandalism, racism can all be tied to the movement.
Police reform does need to go beyond racism, the war on drugs hurts people of all races, the practices which constitute police brutality and the culture which excuses it hurts all people.
There's certainly room for less racially charged fixes to problems that irrefutably affect all races, I would prefer that in some cases. However, there is a very strong case for how US law enforcement is not treating the races the same. The statistics, experiences and history paint a clear picture, the reason that some of these cases blow up isn't just because they're horrific but because they become symbolic.
I think it goes without saying that if a movement is trying to end police brutality against blacks, that they're going to push for changes which end police brutality against all races. I think you more or less agree with most of this.
It just seems you're stuck on a literal interpretation of "black lives matter" whereas I see it as a reprimand of the government which acts like they don't. If you have sources which suggest that they're literally concerned with saving as many black people as possible then show but it sounds ridiculous.
There is nothing to obey. There is no requirement. They can live and gather as they wish in an open society. And they can do so without disrupting anything.
I think BLM thinks of itself as international, not nationalistic. Any campaign against a specific thing is going to be, by your definition, unbalanced. No campaign can be expected to be exhaustive. Racist violent crime by white people is an existential problem for black Americans. The ghettoisation of black people that underlies black gang culture is another existential problem with similar reasons of structural racism, e.g. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12111-012-9212-7
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Right, so you want them to prioritise sorting out black-on-black violent crime before anyone does anything to stop white police officers murdering black men, I get it. But of course they have no recourse to functioning law enforcement which is part of the reason crime is so rife, so Catch-22.
Okay, so just to be clear then. Your anti-black-lives-matter position is that you are troubled by the support networks you say they are not putting in place to disrupt a nuclear social requirement you say doesn't exist. :up:
Just to be clear, your only arguments are straw men. Is that because you think you’re clever, or because you have no other argument?
That was all faithful to your responses. That your argument lacks any degree of coherence, only you are to blame.
That’s nonsense, but it appears nonsense is the going rate here.
He'll also defend Trump forever and is a "I don't see no colour" contributor to systemic racism. Not much there worthy of respect other than him having a pulse.
Purely educational, honest! :joke:
Quoting 180 Proof
I could understand that. However I think there was the emphasis or implied emphasis of the phrase, I suppose.
Quoting 180 Proof
Very well said.....
Quoting 180 Proof
That is the perception however, from OUR (people of color's perspective) such a notion of revenge masqueraded as "equality" is only the result of the residual effects of white privilege. But I invite you to the following video (please skip all the way to 29:30):
During my downtime I'm going to analyze that video and come back here to it.
Hmmm who are these "most people?"
Quoting Isaac
I get what you're saying here, but what does that have to do with the crux of BLM's message of systemic racism and the lack of transparency when it comes to police misconduct?
What are those reasons?
Quoting Judaka
Of course you feel this way.
Quoting Judaka
Such as? What terrible things are they responsible for because as far as my knowledge goes the Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed BLM as a non-hate group:
"In recent weeks, we’ve received a number of requests to name Black Lives Matter a hate group, particularly in the wake of the murders of eight police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. Numerous conservative commentators have joined the chorus. There is even a Change.org petition calling for the hate group label.
In our view, these critics fundamentally misunderstand the nature of hate groups and the BLM movement.
Generally speaking, hate groups are, by our definition, those that vilify entire groups of people based on immutable characteristics such as race or ethnicity. Federal law takes a similar approach."
Source:https://www.splcenter.org/news/2016/07/19/black-lives-matter-not-hate-group
Also addressing this:
Quoting Judaka
Makes me think of this:
"Mass Resistance (or MassResistance) posted a blog June 11 claiming BLM is a “violent Marxist-Leninist group at its core” and that its goals are ultimately “destructive to blacks.”
The blog included racist dog whistles, such as claiming BLM is “relentlessly angry” and “violent” – pervasive stereotypes applied to Black people. Black women are most often dehumanized as “angry” while Black men are often characterized as “violent,” thus providing an excuse to enact racist state violence against them."
Source:https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/06/29/mass-resistance-falsely-claims-black-lives-matter-destroys-families-likens-movement-nazi
Because of the fact that whites at least as it is genuinely known, is that they'll lose political/social influence that they've held on for so long. The fear that they'll be the minority in the United States, and the fear that they believe minorities will take advantage based on numbers. However, these fears are misplaced, but this also demonstrates the fragility and subconscious guilt many have based on the historical atrocities that has afflicted people of color.
Quoting ssu
Wow. First off let's start with apartheid and how it totally affected the black Africans. Not to mention many of the white Dutch who have mistreated the black Africans for so long disenfranchising and displacing many of the indigenous Africans there. However we don't need to look to South Africa for a revolution. I'm largely comfortably with this new generation's open-mindedness to the struggles of people of color.
Quoting Anaxagoras
Feel like giving us a source for this.
Not according to me and the rest of the 45 million or so Black Americans. My life surely didn't matter when I was walking home at night in my black hospital scrubs and some deputies decided to hop out of their car unholstering the weapon all because they thought my cargo scrub pants were "tactical." My life didn't matter when in graduate school after leaving lecture being stopped by LAPD and having my hands placed on a running car vehicle and when I protested how hot his car hood was being told "don't you people like barbecue?" Surely, BLM then wasn't evident. My life doesn't matter to a cop. They'll see my tattoos and automatically label me a gang members regardless of my education and/or clinical profession.
Quoting NOS4A2
I'm not concerned about the founders political/social ideology cause clearly conservative outlets have already brandished the movement as anti-white, anti-American, anti-police etc.
Quoting Anaxagoras
Quoting Anaxagoras
Are they fearful or open minded? I’m not sure where you’re coming from?
Sure, for example according to Vox:
"But the prospect of being in the minority can suddenly make white identity — and all the historical privilege that comes with it — salient. And, she guessed, the prospect of losing majority status was likely to make people (perhaps unconsciously) uneasy. In other words, she wondered if white people would read the news of a coming “minority majority” shift as a threat, a “threat” powerful enough to change their thoughts and behavior."
Source:https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/1/26/14340542/white-fear-trump-psychology-minority-majority
Another source, according to The Miami Herald:
"It turns out the anxiety we should be talking about is that felt by Johnson’s source. For most of the 242 years of our national life, one thing has always been predictable as a children’s movie and dependable as the floor beneath your feet. White men will always be represented in, and in fact, will dominate, any room where power and authority are wielded.
But the times, they are a’changing. Women, people of color, religious minorities and others have slowly forced their way into those rooms. Additionally, there is the demographic fact that white preponderance — and, thus, unchallenged white prerogative — are shrinking."
Source:https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article193285194.html
I'm mostly referring to the U.S. whites who believe they need to sustain their privilege, power, and influence in U.S. society. But because of their demographic decline and the rise of minority-majority, the stoking of fear resides in the fact that these like-minded whites will fear losing their influence on society. Imagine having to see people in media represent you for so long on television only to be eventually replaced by a person of color. This paradigmn shift will cause fear because now, while being so comfortable in seeing someone represent you everyday, you'll go from this historical representation to a new one where you'll see a minority-majority shift where now people of color are common place and in positions of power and whites are less represented socially.
That looks like conjecture more than fact.
Well, I don't enjoy characterising groups, it's tedious. I don't like identity politics and I don't agree with violence. Racial histories, giving racial groups undue significance or irrational objectives and emotions, identity politics, so silly.
However, what is BLM guilty of? BLM is too big now, it means too many different things to many different people. Should anyone under the umbrella of BLM be judged for the actions of a few? When there's barely any formal structure?
I think I said too much in my initial post, I will just leave it at that.
Quoting Judaka
Yes, I agree with that; on the other hand, a not-overly-sympathetic white guy can see that black people have consistently been discriminated against--maybe not all individually--but as a group, certainly.
Working people--black, white, and brown--have been the recipients of exploitation and discrimination across the board. That's the nature of capitalism: exploit, accumulate, conquer, rule. When you are broke, you are broke -- and it means very similar things whether one is black or white. Black people have been aggregated in certain places more than white people (by segregation), so they are more visible in their suffering.
I don't understand the question. 'Most people' refers to most people, it's a statistical assumption based on the samples that I've had the opportunity to learn about thus far. I get that you might disagree with the assumption, maybe prefer a different range of samples, but I'm not seeing the confusion over the tern 'most people' itself, I'm afraid.
Quoting Anaxagoras
It hasn't got anything to do with it, I don't think you understood what I said. I was saying that unlike poverty (which is a scalar issue) race is considered (falsely, I might add) to be a binomial issue. So I'm not saying it has anything to do with BLM. I'm saying it is unlike the BLM issues because it is scalar (there's always someone both poorer and richer than you). You asked why people have a problem with it. My answer was that unlike poverty (where people can always have both worse-off and better-off), race is (widely considered to be) either 'black' or 'white', not 'more-black' and 'less-black'.
Victims of systemic racism (as a group) is exclusionary, it is not universally possible to both sympathise and be a victim in the way one can with poverty (I sympathise with the homeless, but I'm not paid enough to cover my mortgage). Either I am a victim (where I may or may not also sympathise with other victims) - because I'm black, or I sympathise with victims (but am not one myself) - because I'm white.
My point was that people tend to cope with the guilt of being at some level of prosperity (or opportunity, security, freedom... - whatever measure of well-being you want to use), by also seeing themselves as victims of those higher up the scale than they are. They can both sympathise, and be sympathised of.
Campaigning against systemic injustice based on (false) binomial characteristic like race switches many people off because it puts them only in 'sympathiser' category, not also in the 'sympathised with' category. That makes people uncomfortable. It also makes them look much harder for inconsistencies and hypocrisy, they really want to find some way in which the group they've been excluded from either don't deserve sympathy, or aren't an exclusionary group at all.
Thankfully, the above is not the only psychology in play, and the BLM movement has enough support from other aspects of group dynamics to get some of its objectives met. As I said at the outset, I'm not criticising the movement, you just asked why people have a problem with it. That's my answer.
The bottom line is that no step in ending racism or systemic racism requires identity politics.
Identity politics just distracts from the real issues such as poverty, police brutality, the mass incarceration and so on. I think fighting racism is a bit of a game of wack-a-mole, you see it and you give it a whack.
Otherwise, most problems that affect black Americans can simply be characterised as bad policy and poverty, as you say.
No need even for a history lecture to counter the argument, anaxagoras. To be a black farmer in South Africa is as dangerous if not more dangerous, so the statistics simply tell there is no revenge ethnic cleansing going on. The simple fact is that South Africa is a dangerous country and what better places to rob than a lone farm in the countryside separated from other population far away from any police patrol. And the USA surely isn't South Africa, just to start with how crazy these ideas are.
Quoting Judaka
Very well said.
I would go further and say that identity politics is not just a distraction, but a deliberate way to further polarization of the political field and reinforce the status quo where bipartisanship or any kind of consensus seeking doesn't exist. Both parties encourage their own view of identy politics and welcome it with open arms.
A couple bad experiences might lead one to use faulty generalizations, and that is probably true for some police as well.
If the police treat you unjustly—excessive use of force, denial of constitutional rights, failure to intervene, indifference to risk of harm—you have legal recourse to sue their jack-boots off.
I would go a step further than calling it a distraction, i would say its about power and control. There are useful idiots who participate in the PC and outrage culture, and there are real activists who want change, and bad actors using it as an excuse to act shitty AND there is a core ideology spread by idealogues that use the groups, social media structure and social justice culture to exercise authoritarian social control.
We even have an excellent case study, Evergreen University. The academics produced ideologues who produced outrage that produced a culture that produced a cult. It started out just like it has in the wider world, changing definitions of words like “racism”, controlling speech and framing everything as identity politics and it ended up with nothing short of an authoritarian cult roaming around the campus committing acts of violence and hunting down the “racists” and “bigots” who had become everybody but their cult group. Like we see now, the police were told to stand down, to not interfere. Like we see now, the Dean and staff were cowed into submission with guilt and shame so that the cult could take over and thats exactly what they did.
Nazi Germany and the other horrors of modern history started this way too, but somehow its been forgotten. So we have Evergreen, very recent. Lesson learned? Nope! Failure of memory? Nope! Failure of courage, failure of attention.
I've listed several sources that maybe you refused to even read that verifies my position.
:up:
The question was simple who are the "most people" in the context of which you've made that comment?
Quoting Isaac
I see your point.
Stop. Not a couple but quite a few bad experiences, and shared bad experiences between me, my family, and my community.
Quoting NOS4A2
This is the position that BLM argues because there is no transparency and accountability. Police unions protect officers and complaining on specific officers takes decades for even an internal affairs investigation to occur unless there was a serious incident. My previous post was not generalizing all police officers, simply, I was emphasizing the "my life didn't matter" part to show that in my experiences such reckless behavior displayed by my encounters showed that they didn't care about my human existence.
:strong:
Quoting Anaxagoras
My apologies. I thought your quotes were what a was to read. The actual source itself is more in depth.
No worries
Most people=the majority of the current population of the planet earth ( I suppose we could also make assumptions about past populations, but then we'd have to disentangle cultural and biological influences, though it seems from DeWaal's work that justice might well be a shared notion even among primates)
Evergreen State College was designed as an experimental institution, opening in 1967. At one time I knew the Dean of Faculty, Willi Unsoeld, and Pete Sinclair, a professor of English, both having been climbers in the Tetons when I was active there. Willi developed an outstanding outdoor program, but was unfortunately killed in a mountaineering accident while leading a student group. So, initially, the sort of conflict described here did not exist. Evergreen was simply a very unusual progressive college that appealed to certain kinds of students, some attracted to the outdoor program, others wishing to design their own curricula.
What happened after the 2016 election had probably been building for awhile, however. And its repercussions have given Evergreen a reputation that has negatively affected enrollment - last year below 3,000. Not all the faculty supported the destructive aspect of the anti-racist agenda, and a couple who did not and were outspoken were essentially driven from the campus, fearing for their safety. You can find a brief discussion of this in the Wikipedia article.
Im very well versed in the incident. :up:
Mostly because the media, and BLMs average supporters, either claim or insinuate that only black people are killed by police in the USA, indicating they don't look things up before believing them.