I grew up in a large family of adopted children so I can totally relate to dealing with these sorts of comments. One of the most valuable things i learned from that upbringing was family means so much more then biological reproductive chains.
1 Like
All comments matter. 
Not just logical thought out ones.
8 Likes
when you look at statistics and you find divisions, then isnât it useful to talk about them? even highlight them?
take people out of the equation â itâd be as if my computer kept crashing due to low hardrive space, and the rallying cry was: âfix all the bugs!â one action matters most to stability, all other actions only distract from the problem. ( and, in this analogy, maybe even make things worse! )
4 Likes
At the risk of troll feeding, I am happy to engage in a dialog here. I would like to clarify a few points regarding who I am speaking with. You indicate you speak for âthe majorityâ and âmost of usâ but fail to identify who
âusâ might include. The world population? Pretty unlikely. The entire population of the US? Looking at current demographic data that looks pretty darn unlikely too ( https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p25-1143.pdf ). So who are you claiming to represent? The majority of white people? Not seeing that too much either based on current elected officials nationwide. Narrowing it down a bit. So you represent the majority of people who follow you on facebook? Go to your rallies? Watch Fox News? Who exactly elected you as their spokesperson here?
Now to your statement regarding black-on-black violence. I see a whole lot of numbers being thrown around, mostly by conservative infotainers. What does the FBI have to say on the subject? https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2012.xls
Interesting. That document does not seem to bear out your math at all. Care to provide an actual citation? Hint: Because Rush says so isnât an actual citation.
Looks like we progressives are not the only ones hanging out in circle jerks of like minded individuals!
Feel free to respond with some actual data to back up your assertions.
10 Likes
Some more actual data for anyone interested:
https://lib.law.washington.edu/content/guides/racecrim
2 Likes
It is a difference of language, the progressives assume it is obvious to the world that all lives matter and are pissed that the other side appears to assume that black lives do not matter or accept them mattering less, these signs are true but result from honest though echo chamber discussion rather than well designed mind changing PR.
The reactionaries get upset when they see 'Black Lives Matter" signs, correctly feel they are directed at them and get hurt feelings. They then try to deflect the criticism, both internally and externally, by attempting to use more-progressive language editing it to make the black lives matter signs appear racist and therefore invalid, at least in their own echo chamber.
7 Likes
(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)
(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)
(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)
Some of the problem seems to be the people you say âAll lives matterâ to. If youâre talking to someone who doesnât acknowledge the value of black lives, it can emphasise the fact that we are all in this together - arbitrarily denying the value of a life is absurd. In this sense, âblack lives matterâ isnât just saying âall lives matter, including black livesâ, but also directly responding to messages from society for centuries that âblack lives donât matterâ. If youâre talking to a black person asserting that their life matters, itâs either repeating what they just said (in which case it isnât adding much), claiming that their focus is too narrow and they should broaden/weaken their demands or just failing to recognise the specific issues that are being addressed, that are not weakened by the fact that white people also occasionally get killed or imprisoned unjustly. We are all in this together, but we arenât all facing the same oppression.
4 Likes
Yeah, the echo chamber really doesnât help here. The only thing that changes minds is going out and talking and listening to people with differing views: the disconcerting part is when itâs you that ends up having your own mind changed, which tends to be quite traumatic, so itâs entirely understandable when people go out of their way to avoid the possibility of that happening by staying inside their own echo chambers. Itâs not remotely a good thing, but itâs understandable at least.
1 Like
(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)
You are right that it wonât be convincing to people who donât already think that black people are disproportionately likely to be killed by the police at the moment (i.e. the premise that black lives, in practice, arenât currently treated as if they matter as much as white lives). Then again, how one can ever convince people that are so stubbornly determined to ignore the evidence in front of their eyes, I donât know.
2 Likes
Progsplaining (n) The result of asking Rick Wakeman a question.
9 Likes
This is quite true, and it gets pointed out in a lot of rebuttals to this talking point. The other point made frequently is, yes, thereâs a lot of black-on-black crime â and white-on-white crime, and Latino-on-Latino crime, and so on, which happen at pretty much the same rates. One of the effects of segregation is that many interactions, including most criminal interactions, happen most often between members of the same segregated community.
An important point that Iâve rarely seen pointed out is that, even more than Fox goes on about black-on-black crime, conventional middle class black leaders go on about it. Check out the bulletin boards in a community center or church in a predominantly black neighborhood, and youâll usually see all sorts of announcements for events for black youth and whatnot that express this pervasive anxiety about the need to keep black youth under adult control and moral guidance.
One of the things thatâs been going on with the #blacklivesmatter movement has been some earnest challenging of established middle class black leadership. Early on in Ferguson, there were complaints about local older middle class black leaders, who were on friendly terms with local police officialdom and had had regular meetings with them for years. They trusted the police more than they trusted young black people.
(This kind of led naturally to the blowout at the overbearingly stage-managed event in DC where Al Sharpton insulted the organic leadership of #blacklivesmatter; they didnât take it lying down, fortunately, likely because theyâd been confronting this pattern all along.)
One of the patterns of oppression is that the ideas that are used to justify that oppression often take root among the oppressed, especially when there are careers to be made in participating in that system of oppression.
4 Likes
In theory, black people have the same human rights as white people.
IN PRACTICE, black peopleâs lives are treated as much less important than white peopleâs lives.
We see this manifested in countless ways that are actually pretty easy to objectively quantify. Who gets stopped or arrested by police more often (black people), who is more likely to get shot by police (black people), who gets longer sentences for the same crimes (black people), which drug offenses yield longer sentences (the kinds of drugs black people use), who gets better access to social services (white people), hellâeven the way we enforce the death penalty (more likely to be used against a black offender, and FAR more likely to be used when their victim was white).
The only possible way to NOT see systemic racism is if youâre trying very hard to blind yourself to it.
23 Likes
-
A person who, when pulled over by police, gets out of the car and punches the police officer in the face has a high chance of getting shot. This is wrong, because âViolent cirimalsâ lives matter, tooâ.
-
A person who behaves properly has a lower chance of getting shot, but that chance is non-zero, which is wrong, because âLaw-abiding citizensâ lives matterâ.
-
If either of those people happens to be black, their chance of being shot increases, which is wrong, because âBlack lives matterâ.
I think most people can agree on these three examples. People might not agree on which is the âworstâ example, but people will agree that they are all âwrongâ.
People could calmly argue about which is the most pressing problem, or they could even agree to disagree and happily work together fixing all three problems at once.
But, in the realm of slogans, compromise is impossible.
You pick one statement, thus emphasizing one particular viewpoint. Any response that does not go along with emphasizing exactly the same viewpoint then dilutes that emphasis. People who respond that way become âthe enemyâ.
Once person A says âBlack Lives Matterâ, person B canât say âViolent criminalsâ lives matter, tooâ without sounding like a racist. However, if person B got there first, person A saying âBlack lives matterâ sounds a bit strange.
Whoever is second just needs to come up with a different slogan that doesnât directly dilute the first slogan. There is no reason why someone who cares more about police brutality in general than about racism canât âfightâ alongside someone whose primary concern is racism.
1 Like
Except that all the people who showed up to champion âAll Lives Matterâ as a slogan did so IN RESPONSE TO the âBlack Lives Matterâ slogan. By and large, the people asking to change the slogan to âAll Lives Matterâ werenât fighting against police violence beforeâthey just started getting angsty that someone was fighting for a civil rights cause that didnât specifically include them.
It would be like a bunch of men showing up to a conference addressing violence against women just to point out that men can be victims of violence too. Doing so would be inane because
- Nobody implied otherwise
- Women face unique challenges in this area that generally do not apply to men
- Making such a conference all-inclusive would also mean losing focus on the specific problem
- Nobody was stopping anybody else from organizing their own conference anyway
7 Likes
Shifting the discussion to debating the slogan itself, and wasting time on it, is pretty much the point.
2 Likes
1 Like
