Oh hell no, it’s a good thing. Just riffing on the ‘Millennials are killing…’
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@Israel_B, perhaps you could take some time to be less than dismissive? I was quite curious, but it appears you’ve taken it as a chance to snub? Bravo if so, quite unoffensive.
Did my question about what offends you, offend you? Not even being meta.
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I wouldn’t valorise them too much. Japanese police are infamous for their talent at extracting “confessions”.
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No snubs were intended at all, sorry if it read that way. I really try to not be backhanded about comments. Unfortunately brief replies can be misread as dismissive.
As for feeling offended, it seems obvious that it is always personal and subjective and situational. I really don’t have a formula or standard for what offends me and certainly don’t claim the right to define what should offend anyone else.
Looking back “genuinely required” might not have been the best word choice but I still can’t think of a better phrasing.
I’m not offended by your questioning of if I was being dismissive. Again if it read that way my apologies, it certainly wasn’t my intent.
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I didn’t ask what offended you. You said “and save that for when its genuinedly needed”.
I am asking abut that moment or period in time, and how you know that when has arrived.
It may sound like a ‘what’ but it’s not. Similarly ‘how’, ‘why’, and ‘who’ would also read as changes of the subject you introduced, to the point of a dodge in bad faith. I don’t want to accuse, but I’d like it if you stopped changing the subject you introduced, or clarify as it’s confused me that you haben’t said when. An example from the past when would be just as informative as a supposition about a future when, to me.
I’d hate to think you’re playing keep away with information that’s really only of passing interest to someone who asked about your statement of your standards. Nice you have em, why bring em up if they’re not up for discussion?
anyhow, thanks i guess, but I don’t quite get your meaning.
(and fair enough if you notice I did also ask ‘what’ in my last message)
We are discussing feelings here as far as I understand. In a particular moment I may feel upset and not know until later that I actually felt offended. Or I may feel offended and catch myself realizing that I’m taking offense where none was particularly directed at me personally or me as a part of some larger grouping. Sometimes someone is clearly trying to offend me personally but for whatever reason it doesn’t stick and I just don’t feel offended, I might not even realize the nature of the situation at the time.
When is always situational. In the best case I can even de-escalate myself very quickly and realize that I don’t need to take offense even if an act, symbol or utterance is designed to cause it. That is to say something that offended me in the past, I might have learned not to take offense at that thing if it happened again.
wearing a blue lives matter band seems like political speech to me.
it seems to me something the officer should be reprimanded for… but, i’m not holding my breath.
contrariwise, there are people who feel that the blue lives matter flag is an unacceptable alteration of the stars and stripes.
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The reason we don’t need a “Blue Lives Matter” movement is because our society already treats police as if their lives matter. When a police officer is killed in the line of duty they get honor guards and ceremonies and statements from the mayor and highways named after them. There will be entire squads of detectives tracking down suspects. If the killer’s identity is known there is virtually ZERO chance that they will walk away without a conviction, let alone without a trial. And that’s assuming the dead cop’s colleagues even try to take them alive.
Yes, police can and do die on the job. But lumber workers and miners and fishermen are almost ten times as likely to do so and they don’t have wristbands.
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You mean the same reason that we don’t need a ‘White history month’, or a ‘White Entertainment Television’ station?
When you already have all the privileges and advantages, such statements are excruciatingly redundant, to the point of being obnoxious.
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Well, sort of.
“Police history month” has very different connotations. Or “Carpenter history month”. Since those jobs, at least in theory, have little to do with race. And they are somewhat timeless. Haven’t there always been police? And carpenters?
Wait, for that matter, haven’t police departments done a pretty good job with racial integration over the last 50 years or so? Anyone have any stats?
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Do people petulantly bring those up every Black History Month? Because I literally see comments like that every damn year in February.
Not so much, but even if that were 100%true, being a person of the oppressed group doesn’t make anyone ‘immune’ to facilitating and enabling a corrupted system; it often means that they are more likely to double down in the effort to blend in with the status quo.
A Black cop can be every bit as bigoted towards the Black community as a White one can.
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The point is about privilege.
In a different sense, we don’t need a police awareness month for the same reason we don’t need an oligarchy awareness month, or a plutocrat history month.
Those guys already have the power and won’t stop making people aware of them. Sometimes by taking your rights away, and owning everything. Sometimes by taking your rights away and killing you with guns and teargas.
Cops are already in a state of extreme privilige, and the blue lives matter movement is just a callow reaction to others asserting that they have rights too.
When you have all the privilege and are used to being on top, someone else being treated like they’re as good as you feels like an assault.
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Yup. A Mexican crossing the border knows the worst thing that could happen is get caught by a Mexican-american cop.
Our Chicano hero’s got a lot to prove, and he’s got to uphold the image to his white colleagues that he’s just as tough, or better yet tougher on Mexicans than the white guys.
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“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
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Bingo.
Part of the reason that Boyz in the Hood resonated so deeply with both the Black community and critics alike was the rare glimpse into that complicated but covertly essential aspect of racism; self hatred.
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I can’t imagine the situation in any real sense. I’ve been a white dude all my life, so I can’t actually say. But it’s gotta saddle a huge chip on your shoulder, being a person of color in a white dominated police department. It’s gotta feel like everyone’s watching your every move. And when police unions and departments don’t seem to care whether or not their officers have iron cross tattoos and happen to rally with some bald headed gentlemen on weekends, it’s gotta be scary and have insane pressure to just try and do the right things to stay on the good side of the thin blue line.
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It is. I saw it literally shortly before reading about it here (mere hours), and immediately clocked it as menacing.
It took a while for me to makes sense on my own of the Blue Lives Matter movement. I decided eventually that the movement may have been started with good intentions, but swiftly was seen as an opportunity to derail BLM. And so, anyone so into Blue Lives Matter that they fly that flag is to be viewed with suspicion. Not even my brother who is a cop flies this flag. Nor any of my family (not even my lifelong conservative father).
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I get that comparing “Blue Lives Matter” to “Plumbers’ Lives Matter” is an earnest attempt to think rationally about the subject, but I think by doing so you’re removing the group from the relevant context, and the context here is very very important. Plumbers’ Lives Matter does not exist; Blue Lives Matter does. Why is that?
Blue Lives Matter exists because of Black Lives Matter. It is a direct response. The one came after the other and it deliberately uses the same language to define itself. Suggesting that Blue Lives Matter “doesn’t involve race” because Blue is a profession is well intentioned but wrong.
A naive history of the situation goes something like this: Some black people got together because they wanted to say, “our lives matter”. Some police, on seeing this, got together to say “actually, our lives matter”. Should you be offended? In my opinion you should not be super thrilled that this is how your police choose to engage in dialog with the public.
Plumbers’ Lives Matter doesn’t exist because Black Lives Matter isn’t about plumber brutality.
Personally I’d have felt comfortable asking. The key, when you’re trying to understand someone else’s point of view, is to leave your own views, opinions and prejudices to the side and to start the conversation from scratch. So my dialog tree would have started with:
“What’s that wristband?”
Cop: Something something Blue Lives Matter something something.
“So is that like Black Lives Matter?”
The answer to that second question ought to give you a pretty good idea of where the officer stands, and also whether or not it’s safe to continue with the line of questioning.
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