Whoa, that’s . . . three-fifths. Chilling, really. And to think the first thing everyone is supposed to say is, “We have made progress, blah blah blah…”
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OK, if you really think I’m “demanding a movement which aims to serve a distinct cause conform to” me, I think you’re still missing my point. I’ll just step aside then. Too bad. I still think we can accomplish more if we all work together. Shouting down concerned people who are trying to help is just counterproductive. I’m just too tired of all the BS to put up with more petty infighting. There’s too much divisiveness in this world as it is, and racism falls pretty neatly into that category as well.
The bottom line is “All Lives Matter” is not a “stupid thing to say”. Its a positive thing to say. It just does not fit in exactly with some peoples thinking. But lashing out at people who say it IS stupid, AND intolerant.
It’s not a stupid sentiment in general. It’s a stupid thing to say in response to “Black Lives Matter,” because the whole point of “Black Lives Matter” is to call attention to how black people in particular are disproportionally likely to fall victim to police violence.
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Agreed.
i didn’t say it on purpose, but yeah when i saw the percentages a chill went up my spine.
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This could just be wishful thinking, but i wish we had better statistical breakouts on police shootings so that we could put some tangible action into place in the hotspots with the most issues. Like better training for the police.
Also we need to reverse the militarization of the police and change the emphasis from stopping bad buys and catching people to feed the prison industrial complex to protecting people. Protecting people should be their prime directive.
There used to be a time when they would try and de-escalate dangerous situations including people waiving guns, now they just shoot anyone who might possibly have a gun, which in the US is pretty much anyone.
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And those spending time bashing those who’ve said “all lives matter” are also wasting time. I don’t think most who’ve said “all lives matter” are racist or that they don’t believe that “black lives matter”. Again this entire subject is spinning semantic wheels instead of addressing deeper issues of racism.
NOT ALL WHITE PEOPLE
Ah, more conservasplaining. Please tell us more how to both “win” and actually solve the problems before us by appealing to people who don’t give a shit about the problems before us. (But don’t, this tone driving trollies is unconstructive and useless.)
Someone smart and legitimately interested in good wouldn’t. The very specific movement is for black lives. They can come up with their own title and work independently without trying to water down the action.
If you’re an insecure white person with little empathy or concern for others, your assumption might be “BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN ABOUT ME”.
We can never explain something enough to reach your average idiot, though.
And “too” wouldn’t make it palatable for the person you suggest reaching.
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It’s both, really. People who are tone-deaf are supremacist through lack of concern for others. They don’t have to be, they just don’t give enough of a shit about anyone but themselves to not be.
Problem here is that “not real (but still) racists” end up supporting racist action from the State through this self-indulgent bullshit. They think solving these problems is zero-sum.
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“Black Lives Matter” is a derail. We could be talking about police brutality, we could be talking about basic civil and human rights. We could be talking about government overreach. Instead, we’re arguing about which group of people is more severely affected by these problems, and which group of people doesn’t “get it”. News flash: Black People have it worse. This is not controversial. Double news flash: these problems don’t get worked on when they’re framed primarily as Black Issues (which they aren’t.)
#Blacklivesmatter was a dumb campaign. #alllivesmatter was a dumb antidote.
Divisive rhetoric is fun, and only fun. It’s the cool thing to say, to act like you’re on “the right side of history”, to deride those who disagree with you, or better yet, deride those who agree with you but don’t use the same style of terminology that you favor. Deride those who agree with you, but not loudly or quickly enough. #blacklivesmatter was fun. #blackbrunch was fun. #crimingwhilewhite was fun. It’s fun to put people down and be on “the right side of history”. That’s great. That’s fun. It’s fun to sling decontextualized MLK quoted back and forth.
Eventually you realize that there is no right side of history. Nothing is inevitable. You can be on the side of life, on the side of making history, or you can be on the side of death, of letting history happen. And hey if you’re cool and clever maybe you can tailor your quotes and hashtags and practiced stances and see which way the wind is blowing, and you can position yourself so that the place you’re standing now is the place everyone else arrives at later. But that doesn’t make you a visionary that makes you a coward.
The entire African-American Civil Rights Movement was primarily framed as a Black issue throughout.
It’s allies, who seem now to have been better allies than anything social media has to offer except no one will know until later, more often than not avoided co-opting that movement even when those allies were not privileged white allies but other persecuted minorities. Sometimes that avoidance was coerced in that poor allies were sometimes rejected, sometimes manifested in failed attempts to co-opt or undermine, sometimes individuals, groups and agencies actually knew better.
The rhetoric that the nation engaged in then reverberated up from the streets to the halls of Congress and resulted in gains to US Civil Rights that benefitted all despite Black America being the protagonist/antagonist/catalyst of said change.
Competing ideas were common and argued about ad nauseum just like now except those salvos were exchanged through publications, group actions and face to face discourse among the people.
There were even lots of people who said it was a dumb discussion to begin with no matter what form it took that it was all pointless rhetoric.
They were wrong then and now.
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·“Black lives matter” people have been marching on the streets. Anybody who wants to talk about anything else can do so. The internets big enough.
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“Black Lives Matter” started 2 years ago after Zimmerman was acquitted after killing Martin.
In three pages of google results for “All Lives Matter,” the only result NOT from recent months is this Jan 2015 NYT Opinionator post, entitled What’s Wrong With ‘All Lives Matter’?
The timing of this “all lives matter” rhetoric smacks of so-much focus-tested right-wing talking points now that the presidential debate is heating up. Check it: http://time.com/3969053/blacklivesmatter-black-lives-matter-bernie-sanders/
I’d ask where all the “all lives matters” people were two years ago, but the question answers itself - they were ignoring black lives.
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The radical disparity between how black people and white people are treated by law enforcement is the main reason why so many white people fail to recognize that out-of-control police forces are even a problem. Talking heads constantly explain on T.V. that you can avoid most of these problems just by being respectful to police officers, completely oblivious to the fact that the only reason “being polite” kept them out of trouble was that they didn’t have the wrong skin tone.
Do you really think that the civil rights movement of the mid-20th Century would have been more successful if it hadn’t been framed as a “black issue?” Or that suffragettes would have done better if they hadn’t framed their plight as a “women’s issue?” Or that marriage equality would have been achieved sooner if it hadn’t been framed as a “gay issue?”
It’s not “divisive rhetoric” to bring attention to existing discrimination.
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I’d love to bring out this little tidbit from the article you posted because it clearly addresses the question at hand
If we jump too quickly to the universal formulation, “all lives matter,” then we miss the fact that black people have not yet been included in the idea of “all lives.”
Because that’s the infuriating thing, when people say that black lives matter is a subset of all lives matter. Not to all people it isn’t. Might as well say racism doesn’t exist.
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Yep, because black bodies HAVE NOT BEEN THE PRIMARY FOCUS OF STATE VIOLENCE FOR CENTURIES IN AMERICA… What has been happening to the black community in America is modern day lynching. There is no difference, other than some people wave their hands a bit more. This doesn’t mean that whites are not also victimized, just that BLACK PEOPLE ARE SYSTEMICALLY VICTIMIZED. America is a country that is racist as hell. UNTIL we deal with that specific fact, we are not going to get better. We will not become anything remotely resembling a city on the hill until we deal with our past, in an open and honest way, and accept what has happened. WE STILL HAVE PEOPLE TODAY WHO THINK THAT SLAVERY AND JIM CROW “WEREN’T THAT BAD”…
The more I think about it, the more I think that this fucking Achilles heel will bring us down. You want to have a country that is inclusive, and abundant, and free? We absolutely have to deal with race, head on, in an honest fashion. Too many white people have been unable to do so. That must change. This issue, and black lives matter was about black bodies specifically.
Go read a book.LISTEN TO YOUR FELLOW AMERICANS. They are hurting and they need us to pay attention to their struggle and they want us to take it seriously. Go read some Ta-Nehisi Coates. Read some James Baldwin. Read some Alice Walker. Read Toni Morrison. Read Octavia Butler. There are reams and reams on this issue. Stop thinking you known more about the lives of black Americans as they talk about their own experiences.
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Oh, FFS.
The basic work of radical left politics is finding, supporting, and learning from emergent social struggles. And in the US, right now, it’s #BlackLivesMatter. It’s a movement that, whatever its shortcomings, has done an admirable job of avoiding the usual traps and maintaining its independence.
“All Lives Matter” is about eliminating that independence, and reducing this emergent movement to just another empty gesture. It’s hegemony at work.
Supporting #BlackLivesMatter is simply good strategic sense. Every injustice working class white people face is faced by black people, only much more severely – particularly the criminal justice system and the growing and escalatingly brutal power of the police.
“All Lives Matter” is like responding to a labor strike with a complaint that all workers matter, so why concentrate on this struggle? All wars are wrong, so why protest this one? Why gather thousands together when you can scatter everyone to the winds?
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What the heck sort of shameless projection is this? What benefits Black America benefits us all.
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