one middle-class black guy telling a city of poor black people to âstop and thinkâ before they âfuck shit upâ?
this is not particularly insightful or helpful commentary.
It isnât? How so?
Also, yeesh, BB. Really? Lead with the out of context quote âI am all for fucking shit up if it gets us closer to a solution.â which is 180 from what the guyâs actual message is? Really, youâre better than that.
One guyâs thoughts, selectively chosen from many to be signal boosted by white people because they agree with it, as if doing so is different from just publishing their own opinions. It would have looked bad for a white blogger to call the protestors monkeys though, so itâs handy thereâs a black man they can quote.
I know. Itâs shameful. Much better when white people selectively choose to signal-boost the justifications and calls for violence that they will neither carry out nor be subjected to.
Wait I am confused on this. So this guyâs opinion is invalid because white people might agree with him? I guess he is an Uncle Tom or something?
Hogwash. The entire Civil Rights movement was founded on non-violent protest for a reason. They knew the alternative wouldnât work. Two wrongs donât make a right. Violence like that only reaffirms negative stereotypes and biases other people have. Holding yourself to a higher standard than the shit around you is how you elevate a community.
Yeah, a white person canât get away with calling people monkeys or using the N-word. Duh. But focusing on his vulgarity doesnât discredit the message. It is the CONTEXT of the use that is important.
so lemme see how long ago exactly was it that boing boing called themselves a âpunkâ zine??? mustâve been before they were airing a channel on virgin america flights
Please explain why a video with these statements is being uncritically posted here:
Look at these animal-ass niggas. [...] Did you ever see Planet of the Apes? [...] That's exactly what we looked like. A bunch of fucking monkeys.
And donât say âit wasnât me, a black guy said it!â. It is fucking disgusting to see this anywhere, let alone on Boing Boing. Really unacceptable.
I think this guy is using the language he is using 100% intentional, and his audience is the black community, trying (whether successful or not) to shame them into acting better and more constructively. I doubt he made this thinking that his audience was white people looking for an excuse to be openly racist.
Oh, so heâs just using rhetoric invented by white racists for the express purpose of making blackness shameful in order to shame black people? I canât see anything wrong with that.
Aside from which, why should the rioters be shamed at all? Because you and the vlogger canât figure out how rioting âmoves us closer to a solutionâ? Hereâs a clue: Nobody was talking about police violence in America until rioters in Ferguson torched buildings. A high-profile riot happens, and suddenly politicians all over are talking about the need for reform and oversight. Journalists are throwing tough questions at police chiefs. I can tell you from many years of experience that you donât see that happen after an âorderlyâ protest. People have figured that out - thatâs why theyâre doing what theyâre doing. Itâs not because theyâre animals, or because theyâre incapable of controlling their primal emotions. Itâs because they know the fucking score.
Rioting absolutely âmoves us closer to a solutionâ. Maybe rather than this condescending anti-black rant, @Xeni could have posted this article:
Nonviolence as Compliance by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Officials calling for calm can offer no rational justification for Grayâs death, and so they appeal for order.
When did the story of the civil rights movement change from violent protests, people dying in the streets, and hundreds of black leaders pushing for change to âDr King peacefully changed everything with a few speeches therefore violence in response to violence is unacceptable and changes nothingâ? Dr King was only a very small part of the civil rights movement. He is remembered because of his martyrdom, his oration, and the simple fact that his narrative didnât scare whitey as much as leaders like Malcolm X.
It was not. The civil rights movement involved riots, calls for armed self-defense, and the threat of disorder and violence should black people not be treated as equals. That aspect has been deliberately erased from history, and you help erase it by making that claim.
I think a lot of people are confused on this point, so let me clear it up: The goal here is not to appeal to suburban white people. It is not to be so adorable and respectable that the rich and powerful decide to let black people not be arbitrarily murdered by police any more. People have tried respectability for decades. They do not and will not care. This is a show of force. It is a counter-attack in a war that was declared by the police against black people. If society wonât do the right thing because it has a heart, it will do the right thing because it fears the consequences of wrongdoing. Thatâs how war works. If you didnât want war, you shouldnât have let the cops murder innocent people.
Hereâs a clue: Nobody was talking about police violence in America until rioters in Ferguson torched buildings.
No, they talked about it earlier right after the Rodney King riots which accomplished jack shit.
Rioting absolutely âmoves us closer to a solutionâ.
Bullshit. Overall, it divides everyone further and leaves regression behind in its wake.
The aftermath of the Rodney King riots led to most businesses never being rebuilt and a struggling economy. Destroyed lives and here we are again with nothing gained and police brutality still strong in 2015.
Please explain to me how those riots helped that community?
She did. Over an hour ago.. So perhaps itâs possible to post links to multiple points of view without agreeing with them all.
Rodney King is a household name more than 20 years after he was beaten specifically because of the riots that ensued. Those riots led to a major national revelation about police violence, corruption, and racial oppression in LA and around the country. It was so significant that we still talk about it today. Was the problem solved? Obviously not. But a conversation was started - and thatâs more progress than the thousands of candle-light vigils and speeches ever since have made.
But like I said, the LA Riots were more than 20 years ago, letâs talk about Ferguson. Nobody was talking about Ferguson until the protests âturned violentâ. It wouldâve been crazy to imagine Obama making statements about police violence, Eric Holder taking a national tour to dialogue about police-community relations. The idea of police body cameras wouldâve remained a quirky experiment in a few towns.
I can tell you this with certainty, because there are many other cases much like Mike Brownâs murder that have happened in just the past few years, and there have been many orderly, peaceful protests in response. None of them were covered on CNN. None of them prompted any of the stuff I listed above. They were brushed aside because it was possible to brush them aside, because they posed no threat. They demanded no attention.
Calling for strictly peaceful protest is effectively asking us to make the issue ignorable. We will not be ignored any longer.
And you honestly think that is what helped win the hearts and minds of fellow Americans? With that sort of logic they should LOVE us in the Middle East now.
Who is âyouâ? The 7-11 owner had a hand in it?
You donât want a war. You really donât. I really donât. Trust me, there are a lot more ignorant whites with more supplies and fire power just waiting for a 2nd Revolution or a Purge. I good chunk of the South is ready to ârise againâ. Violence like this does jack shit for any cause, no matter how righteous the cause is.
If it was a war there would be a lot more dead cops.
Of course not. War is bad. Violence is bad. We learned these things when we were children, I donât need to be reminded. We donât need to be told âstop the violence because violence is bad mâkayâ. That is not a useful or insightful observation, and it does nothing to actually address the problem at hand, which is cops killing unarmed black people.
Honestly, if you canât solve the problem or even make any meaningful progress towards solving it, you should probably keep your opinions to yourself about what wonât work, and let people try whatever they think might.
iâm probably posting too much, but wanted to acknowledge that youâre right, it didnât show in my feed until now, and Iâm glad she posted it.
