The Problem with Black Lives Matter

Thanks for your contribution to this discussion. Obviously, the subject is still very much a current event thanks to white supremacy groups and counterprotesters.

I'm not saying anyone does, but please don't ever feel like your opinions matter any less. I value your opinion and your perspective.

I guess my main issue is with the identification of BLM. What is BLM? Who is BLM? Everyone seems to know or assume they know. And because it is natural to judge and to make assumptions, it seems natural that people would exclude themselves from it and therefore more easily see wrongs.

Let me explain what I mean.

I'm black so I'm obviously not a member of any white supremacy group. Are there good white supremists? As much as most members of society want to say no, if we're being honest the answer is not that simple. There is gradation involved. While there is a general ideology of shared hatred, this is learned over time. Many people simply want to belong and feel like there are all these groups in society that they don't or can't fit into. Maybe they even feel threatened by this; as if everyone hates them for much the same reason that people generally don't like the government. Power. And the misuse of power. White men have a greater tendency to be identified with the main sort of conglomeration of power. People fear the police as extentions of that same power. "The Man". And the reason all these other minority groups team up is because of the threat this power poses. By the sheer number of whites the government represents their interests by default. While that's good on one hand, it simultaneously forces everyone else to work together in order to get their needs met (too). So yes, democracy is super great when you're part of the majority. It sucks when you're not.

That's why Black Lives Matter (too).

And because there are a large number of whites who aren't trying to team up because they are voting based on issues concerning, not just thesmelves, but the greater good, this creates a division in the numbers that other whites, who do play identity politics, and who do feel entitled to virtually every benefit of being the majority by virtue of their skin color, feel threatened by. So then they feel the need to team up against the other teams.

Everyone who feels this need; who feels threatened, isn't evil. It's simply easy for those who are "not them" to classify them as such. Of course there are differences. These people already have more influence on the levers of power than anyone else so why should they feel so intimidated by minorities? It's really not "their" country. The people who colonized this country and fought for this country and died for this country didn't do it on behalf of "white" people. They did it on behalf of the people who immigrated here, wanting to be free. So while there is a fundamental misunderstanding about who this country should belong to many KKK members are not truly hateful people. They are part of a club that supports them in their daily struggles.

It's very easy to paint an entire organization with a single brush. And you could say well 90% of them are bad so the other 10% should just get out if they're not bad too. That would be a valid argument and yet... these are their friends and family.

As far as BLM goes it would be silly to suggest that 100% of people who support BLM are model citizens. The media often tries to point out a person's faults as if these faults invalidate their perspective. You're white but you have a perspective on BLM. Should we listen to you or not? That's a political question. You don't have to be black to empathize with what BLM is fighting for. You didn't have to be black to empathize with Martin Luther King or Malcolm X. BLM isn't even 5% bad. So why is the other 99% judged as if it is a terrorist cell? The counter protesters that were ready to fight... those weren't even BLM. That was a different, non-exclusive, group against fascism. They never believed in pure non-violence so you saw how prepared they were. BLM wasn't because they're not a violent movement. The difference should be clear. The fascists and the anti-fascists were wearing protective gear and brandishing weapons.

Malcolm X was FAR more radical than any BLM member. What made the original black panthers radical to this day wasn't any sort of hatred they possessed but rather the lengths they were willing to go to protect their community against the police who were, even way back then, murdering people in the street. Imagine if you lived in Japan and the Japanese kept messing with you? Imagine if random Japanese citizens occassionally saw you walking down the street, stole whatever you were carrying, beat you up, and walked away like nothing happened. Other Japanese people see it but look the other way. Malcolm X had a lot of white people who wanted to join his movement. He said no. Many black groups model themselves after MLK or Malcolm X for the same reasons they had. Perhaps you don't understand those reasons but does that automatically make them racist?

Spellman: Will you work with the so-called “established” civil rights organizations?

Malcolm X: Well, we will work with them in any area and on any objective that doesn’t conflict with our own political, economic, and social philosophy which is black nationalism.

Malcolm X: .... I just don’t go along with—there can be no worker solidarity until there’s first some black solidarity. There can be no white/black solidarity until there’s first some black solidarity. We have got to get our problems solved first and then if there’s anything left to work on the white man’s problems, good, but I think one of the mistakes Negroes make is this worker solidarity thing.

Allow me to translate. Malcolm X was saying that black people have to come together to solve their own problems. He was not a racist. When you start fighting for everyone's issues it dilutes the agenda and then what you started the whole thing to do gets taken over until your interests become secondary. The NAACP has been criticized a lot for this very thing. Why does BLM even exist if we have the NAACP? It is because the NAACP lost a lot of focus through the desire to be more inclusive. To be perfectly honest, black people lost a lot because of the desire for inclusion. Everyone remembers Jackie Robinson, but forgets the entire Negro League that went away so that one man could integrate. The same thing happened with the black economy. We used to be in a better position to take care of our own needs because we supported each other's businesses and our economy grew. Now, most of us cannot get a successful business off the ground and most money is simply absorbed by massive mostly-white corporations. This means that most jobs and opportunities have to come from non-blacks which makes us more dependent. Our youth, sense this dependency and know that their survival depends on it. So if they don't believe they can get a good job or they can't make money fast enough to fee their families many turn to crime. It's not because they're black. It's because of a lack of opportunities where no priority is given to black people so many cannot survive in that scenario. So the funny thing is when a black organization is criticized for not integrating people completely forget how much we've already sacrificed in order to integrate.

One of the main criticism I hear about BLM is the violence in Chicago. Again, this is a political attack because the idea is that what you say doesn't matter as much because of who you have in your party. Oh there are a bunch of people in your party who hate cops to the point of chanting "fry em like bacon"? People want to immediately apply these words to thousands of BLM supporters who weren't there; as well as to the founders of BLM as if every expression of anger is scripted by them in advance.

To this day there is no "White Lives Matter Movement" or "All Lives Matter" movement. There is NO universal movement against the police and their tactics. NONE. There is only BLM an their counter protesters who are protesting BLM. Why? Is it because BLM hates white people? No. Imagine if you were an American soldier fighting for freedom against the British and Japanese people came and protested you because, in THAT fight, you weren't fighting for their country. The idea that everyone has to fight for everyone at every time is a fallacy. When the Allies fought the Nazis and gave the Jews their own state what did they simultaneously do for Muslims? Where were all these counter protesting white people talking about "All lives matter" before when so many unarmed black people were getting murdered? Which one of them were out there raising national awareness?

There are whites who do get shot by the police. However, in 2010 black people were less than 10% of the population. This means that there are so many white people that when a (RELATIVELY) small number of them get murdered unjustly by the police THEY (whites) do not complain as a group. This isn't black people's fault for not noticing or fighting for these people that most whites have never heard of. How many whites even knew there was an issue before BLM came along and they needed to look for reasons to bash it? A lot of people were condemning BLM because they didn't believe there was an issue at all and were showing support for the police!

Also, what you don't see because it isn't easily quantifiable, is the lengths that police sometimes go to disarm a white suspect without killing them. See... its' deeper than just people getting shot. We're talking about racially motivated unfair treatment. We're talking about two different standards. A lot of armed whites get talked down. Some whites were even allowed to "takeover" a government building with guns, daring the police to try and stop them. When black people see those stories our first impression is "man... if that was a black dude he'd be dead by now." I guarantee you that MILLIONS of black people think this. Not hundreds or even thousands. There should, statistically, be a lot less black people getting killed but because we are such a minority population the numbers basically tell us a story we already know. And that is that there is a racial aspect to law enforcement in which black and brown people are targeted by police. And no... our lives do not matter to (all of) them.

Do you really think that a white cop isn't trying to save white lives? Of course they are; whether they are racist or not. That's the default. They exist to serve that majority. The ONLY CASE in which a life doesn't matter to a cop is if that cop hates the race that person belongs to. There is no case in which a white cop shot a white person because he hated their race. ALL cops are taught to protect themselves and to basically shoot first if they feel their lives are in danger. Police are also less threatened by white suspects. Therefore, they're more likely to use non-lethal force. Black cops are an extreme minority in a white police force. Even if they were racists there is absolutely no support or sanction for any police action against white people. For minorities there is absolutely support and sanction for targeting minorities. We've heard this from cops themselves.

Everyone would like to believe that racism is dead or dying but that's not true. Most black people can tell you a story of racism because most of us experience racism multiple times in our lives. If people wanted to protest police shootings in general there was an opportunity to do that both before and after BLM came on the scene. Where was that protest? Where was that national spotlight? It didn't exist. The fact that even the name "Black Lives Matter" is so misunderstood to somehow be against whites shows the obscene level of racism black people are dealing with. No one thought it was necessary to add "too" at the end because no one assumed whites would put "only" at the beginning!

BLM started protesting something more specific and something more heinous than police shootings. If a cop shoots a person who is from the majority one could more easily call that a mistake. Did that white cop intentionally shoot that other white person? Maybe? But it is more likely that they only shot them because they felt like they had to for their own safety or the safety of others. Who's going to protest them for that? Maybe a small group might protest one or two officers who have a violent history. But certainly they weren't targeting white people. Who on earth would actually think that white cops would go out there targeting white people???

This is different.

By introducing the racial component we are NOT simply talking about police shootings at it is really a smack to the face of black people to take something that is obviously and overtly racist to us and tell us it isn't racism at all and we're imagining things. That is so dismissive. It's like telling a woman that she didn't get raped because men and women are equal so how could a man rape a woman and why would a man target a woman to rape her? Really? There's no difference? Of course there is. And we need to start seeing a difference when it is an issue. Think insurance companies don't absolutely take advantage of sick people? Do you need to be sick before you find out?

When white supremists chanted blood and soil...
When a white supremists runs people over in his car...
When Dylan Roof gunned down a bunch of black people praying in a church...
There is no doubt that these actions are evil. They reflect the worst hatred and the worst human instinct.

Now imagine the driver of that car and Dylan Roof are partners on a police force, wearing badges paid by your tax dollars. Imagine that these guys are the ones policing your community. If you're white, you may never even notice because they're not pulling YOU over unless they have to. They're not beating YOU up... unless you give them no choice. But what do you think they would do with their authority when all they have to do is say they saw one of us about to pull a weapon and they feared for their lives? This is the fear we live with every day. These cops don't wear swastikas on their uniforms. They don't wear hoods or give the nazi salute. We don't know which one is a racist and which isn't. So guess what? We don't trust any of them by default. We've learned over many years that we can't. We want to. We want things to be different. But until they are different, every cop is potentially a neo-nazi. Every single cop is potentially the KKK. Because just like the Matrix... any one of them you see can be an agent of hate and oppression. And internet videos are proving now what we've always known. We're not making up what's happening to us. We never were. When thousands of black people are supporting BLM, many times more than what you'll ever see at a march or rally, you should take it seriously. They're not making it up. You can look for faults. You can say they shot a criminal... but the law affords ALL citizens due process, not summary execution. You can say, "oh it was just a mistake" but they make many more "mistakes" with us than with you. So these are not just police shootings that we're talking about.

These are racially motivated hate crimes as well as terrorism.

And it is when whites don't see or understand this to the extent that it is a reality for us, that's when we feel like we are fighting all alone against the entire society that is ready and willing to sit back and watch us die. It is a miracle that there isn't more violence against the police. It really is. What some members of BLM have done is NOTHING compared to what many are prepared to do, because while you think it's not that bad, that's not how we feel and many are not willing to sit in time out waiting for the next time when it might happen to someone they know, or maybe even themselves.

There was a young woman who got shot in front of her son. I would describe her has incredibly unhinged. Truly, she brought her death upon herself. She was so angry at the police that even a simply stop became a life or death struggle for her. She truly believed her very life was threatened the moment she saw those lights in her rear view mirror. Was her death justified? Absolutely. She probably would have shot as many as she could but that was because in her mind, they were all a threat to her and her son. Again, was she crazy? Yep. But that fear didn't come from nowhere. It was raised and nurtured by the history of violent interactions with police that she was aware of.

With all due respect, no white person in America wakes up like this; afraid of the police, thinking today might be the day they get shot walking home from school, or walking to the store, or driving a nice car. They assume you're guilty and they feel good when they catch you. All of them? Of course not. But enough to make it a bigger problem for us than for you. We don't exclude whites because we hate you. We exclude whites because you're not the victims of racially motivated criminal behavior of the part of local government. We can't control gang violence. Do we try? Of course we do. However, we should be able to control the police because we're paying them to follow the rules we all agree to. But some are playing by a different set of rules. And when they kill us? They usually get away with it, signalling to other racists that they're allowed to as long as they're wearing a badge.

And sometimes... even when they're not.

Rosalyn J wrote: The contents of this video may be disturbing to some viewers

Warning: Spoiler!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OpYHE5dFII

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It seems I need my own learning opportunity, so I would like to start a discussion about a topic affects people like me

Thank you for sharing this. Though the topic may not directly affect me (apart from the fact that I allow it to affect me to some degree) the topic matters to me.

I am not racist. I have black friends, I have had Asian friends, I have white friends, I have had Hispanic/Latino friends, I have had Middle Eastern friends, I have had Jewish friends, etc. etc. etc. I believe institutionalized racism is a major problem in the United States.

Just so we are clear,
I don't agree with the premise of this video

Just so I am clear: I do agree with the premise of this video. Which is saying something as I have generally supported the cause of movements like BLM and the anti-fascists.

I think the person who posted this video is being honest. I don't think he is being racist. If anyone thinks he is being racist...well, frankly, you are being oversensitive and might need to re-examine your personal definitions for "racist" and "racism."

All that being said, I do think the BLM movement COULD be a very good thing. However, I think ALM would be a better movement.

Whenever someone who is Caucasian says "I have black friends" it seems like I already know what's coming. They are about to side with a criticism against BLM or black people in general, but they want their criticism to sound different, ie. 'not racist', because they don't think it is. Why not? Because you have black friends?

What's funny is that the NFL protest is probably the most popular black protest in our history. You would think, because everyone loves Martin Luther King Jr. now that it was always so and that his protests were popular. No, white people en mass, did not like his protests. Black protesters were attacked. Black protesters were lynched. Black protesters were hung. Black protesters, including the now beloved MLK, were assassinated.

The reason institutional racism has survived to this day is because too many whites are able to turn the other way while it's happening and behave as though it doesn't exist and this is not a problem that we need to protest. Honestly, when the black community is in pain we are BY OURSELVES. Of course white people offer advice from the comfortable position of power, telling us what we should do to better survive under their authority, when it is the responsibility of the police to protect and serve EVERYONE. Understandably, this advice, which often involves bootstraps and hypocrisy, falls on deaf ears because it doesn't seem like they really care until they are being personally inconvenienced.

When you fall and hit your knee, local nerve cells send signals to your brain to tell "you" where the injury is so that "you" can do something about it. The more intense the pain, the more damage may be done. If black people are protesting, it's the same as local nerve cells sending pain signals to the country to let the country know where the problem is so that the nation can do something about it.

If the nation does little to nothing about it then how could it be said that 1. It's not really a problem or 2. the problem is both legs and the knee shouldn't send pain signals for itself but rather when something affect your knee and your elbow your knee shouldn't send pain signals to the brain unless it is coordinating with the elbow.

Does this make any sense to you?

But when it's black people, somehow it makes sense to people that black people shouldn't complain or shouldn't protest, or that black people are "doing it wrong". No one tells us how we should protest. It's always how we shouldn't.

When I have a problem, I don't need to gather all the other people that have the same problem and coordinate on how we're going to solve it together.

Whites are getting shot too. But question.... did white people create a group called "ALL LIVES MATTER"? Did white people organize against bad cops? Did white people, who have more power, and who are in a majority, and who are getting killed at an uncomfortable rate by the police, come to black people and say "hey, let's coordinate because this is affecting all of us?"

No. That didn't happen.

All lives matter did not exist. White lives matter did not exist. One might even question whether whites were being killed at an uncomfortable rate or if they were getting killed at a rate that was quite comfortable for them.

Suddenly, it was when BLACK PEOPLE had a problem.... magically... quite suddenly.... white had a problem, NOT WITH THE POLICE.... but with black people protesting.

Amazing, huh?

White people could have simply said, "YES, I agree. We need to do something about bad cops. And you know what? This is happening to us too so that gives us even more reason to do something about... BAD COPS. Let's call our representatives. Let's call our mayors. Let's put political pressure on this."

But no.

White people said, "We need to do something about black people protesting OUR cops."

And that's how "ALL LIVES MATTER" was even thought up in the first place. It was to ATTACK the entire concept of the BLM protest. It is an attack that denies that the problem even exists. Because if a white person doesn't get a job everything's fair. If a black person doesn't get a job everything must be fair if a white person didn't get it either. That's logical, but that's not reality. In REALITY a black person not getting called back for a job could be because they weren't qualified but it could ALSO be because they were black. And if they are a woman that's another possible strike if the interviewer has a gender bias. So just because you get pulled over for speeding doesn't mean that the police's motives never have anything to do with race. A lot of cops are A-holes by nature because it is a job that attracts those personality types. So yes, a cop could give you a hard time and even shoot you because they're A-holes who were probably picked on in middle school, but there are also A-holes who are racists. We do not have to ignore racism just because they're also A-holes in general.

Where people's intentions are tends to follow their expenditure of energy. The person who made the video invested the energy into voicing BLM criticisms in a time when doing so has been like the in thing to do and it was done by pundits and commentators constantly (because they hated BLM). These same people do not invest the same or greater amounts of energy into criticising the police or talking about who everyone should be calling in order to create political pressure on the police force to change. No... what people did was they changed the argument. They made it seem like they were defending cops like people defend the troops. It's a political dog whistle. Whenever they want you to stop doing something they just pretend you are somehow violating the flag, the national anthem, the troops (because they can take bullets but their feelings might get hurt). They always try to CHANGE what it is that black people are protesting in order to make the protest WRONG.

I ask you not to fall for it.

Black people do not need to coordinate our pain.
Black people do not need to protest in a way that you're comfortable with.
Black people do not need to ignore racism just because you don't want to think any of these cops are racist.
Black people do not need to ignore things like Stop and Frisk.
Black people do not need to ignore the fact that we've been racially profiled for many years.
Black people do not need to forget the fact that the KKK wore hoods because many of them were members of law enforcement
Black people do not need to have a politically correct protest when whites elected a politically incorrect president. That is the height of hypocrisy.
Black people do not need to wait on other people to get behind them when the same people are willing to ignore their message and attack them.
Black people do not need to ignore dog whistle racism, gerrymandering, the 'Southern Strategy' etc.
Black people do not need to pretend that racism suddenly ended the day Obama took the Oath of Office, especially when many whites were calling him and his wife racial slurs
Black people do not need to ignore the way the criminal justice system treats us unfairly or even ask if white officers are also planting drugs on white suspects.
Black people do not need to ignore how ridiculous it is to shoot a child at a park with a toy gun in a matter of seconds when they talk down grown men
Black people do not need to ignore the fact that if a cop is having a bad day we can follow every instruction and law and still end up dead
Black people do not need to ignore that most white cops who kill black people get away with it. Many are not even indicted.
Black people do not need to trust the police because we have years of experience proving that we cannot.

The truth is that every anti-BLM criticism seeks to put black people in check. They, in general, want to ignore the racism and would rather black people not protest at all. We can tell who's really supporting us and who's really for us by those who are willing to set their own race to the side and just be HUMAN enough to see that racism is something that we ALL need to stop. But racism isn't happening to ALL of us. It's happening mainly to black people.

And if you think I'm being too sensitive consider this...

Hispanic men are also racially profiled. Hispanics are also ridiculed with racial slurs. I remember when I found out what a "wet back" was. I was 18 or 19. So they also have a reason to complain about the cops being racists but what you don't see them complaining about is Black Lives Matter. You don't see them going crazy over a lack of inclusion to the point that everyone just ignores what we're actually protesting and the fact that people of all races can react to a protest by getting involved. A protest is a vehicle to raise awareness. But the change comes from the people who see it and who aren't willing to sit on the sidelines and debate the merits of the protest or mistakes emotional humans make in protesting or making videos about why they don't think they're racists. DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE PROBLEM! And then if you want to make an All Lives Matter organization that ALSO protests the police, then go right ahead because no one said whites couldn't do that. But it's All lives matter is not about protesting bad police officers. It's a counter protest, protesting black people.

Not necessarily, some people just know accuracy is really important and when its weak or absent, it can raise red flags about intention. Racism for example focuses on using race to categorize for reasons other then race, and that process can easily become discrimination because such use has its scope (category) exceeding its accuracy (attribute eg race). An easy way to avoid being racist is to ensure the attributes are held by all members of whatever category is being labelled by that attribute. Saying all white people have power is an example, and also saying all black people don't, is another example IMO. What would be probably more correct versions of the first one for example would be either all people in power have more power, or more white people in the US have power then black people in the US. Clear messages are clear.

Such that anyone who relies on race to overly simplify a usually real aspect of the category can potentially be doing so deliberately, and so as misinformation when anything else supports the red flags about intention then their will be a wider range of push-back - no matter the intent of the original message. Because the intent is lost in the badly delivered message, because of the inaccuracy of it. Is BLM a good label for the intended meaning... IMO its a bit weak as it can be misinterpreted as others do not. And so ALM address that inconsistency - but at the cost of detail of the intended meaning. So neither are ideal, perhaps there is something else better!!??

From my experience those who misinterpret BLM do so because it doesn't benefit them. They become defensive. BLM simply says Black lives matter. It doesn't say they only matter or that they matter more.
Because it doesn't include them they find it discomforting or offensive. In all honesty people need to get over themselves here. Black lives do matter. In the history of our nation Black lives have had it the worst or second worst out of the races involved(Native Americans being the contender).
We might not be guilty of kidnapping and enslaving but we are guilty of cowardice if we don't commit to the discomfort of this conversation.

Just my feelings.

Adder wrote: Not necessarily, some people just know accuracy is really important and when its weak or absent, it can raise red flags about intention. Racism for example focuses on using race to categorize for reasons other then race, and that process can easily become discrimination because such use has its scope (category) exceeding its accuracy (attribute eg race). An easy way to avoid being racist is to ensure the attributes are held by all members of whatever category is being labelled by that attribute. Saying all white people have power is an example, and also saying all black people don't, is another example IMO. What would be probably more correct versions of the first one for example would be either all people in power have more power, or more white people in the US have power then black people in the US. Clear messages are clear.

Such that anyone who relies on race to overly simplify a usually real aspect of the category can potentially be doing so deliberately, and so as misinformation when anything else supports the red flags about intention then their will be a wider range of push-back - no matter the intent of the original message. Because the intent is lost in the badly delivered message, because of the inaccuracy of it. Is BLM a good label for the intended meaning... IMO its a bit weak as it can be misinterpreted as others do not. And so ALM address that inconsistency - but at the cost of detail of the intended meaning. So neither are ideal, perhaps there is something else better!!??

First, I agree with a lot of what you're saying. However, when people say "white people have the power" or something to that effect what it means is that white people are in the majority in a representative democracy. Therefore, they have the greatest influence on society and on government. It doesn't mean that white people have group meetings and decide as a group to vote for white issues or vote against black issues. It seems means that "collectively", the majority, by voting for their own issues, and using their political capital/pressure for their own issues, it creates real power that positively affects them and often negatively affects the minority.

Let's put it in a different way. Let's say that a representative number of whites and other races are in a restaurant and there are a limited number of tables and a limited supply of the best meats. Already, there's inequality because the whites will go in with more money to spend. The restaurant isn't unaware of this fact. So who is most likely to get the best service? You may not even notice a difference if you are a customer. If you're a white customer you may not be aware of the difference in service that you are getting compared to minorities. You may experience "normal service". A minority customer may not notice a difference either if they can't see how whites are being served. If you have nothing to compare it to, no frame of reference, then it is not impossible to simply not notice a difference.

In this case and many other cases the judgment is seemingly based on class. These people have money. These people don't. Businesses are therefore more afraid of losing business from the person who can potentially give them the most money. However, how does a business discern which is which? Police officers use racial profiling based on the idea that most of the crime is being done by a certain group. And if the main factor that determines most non-violent crime is income then how do they determine, without seeing your tax returns, which is which? I'm one of the highest paid people in my company and I'm black. That doesn't mean there isn't racial bias or discrimination. And I love the owner of the company like a family member because he treats his employees like family (It's a family business). I would never say anything bad about him but bias is not binary. There are degrees and he's not the only one who makes decisions that affect people. And do I make as much as I should? No. But I don't think the reason for that is racially motivated. I say this because I'm not one of those people who think everything is about race. Money is the biggest factor in a capitalistic society like ours. But again, when you're in a situation where the only thing you know about a person is what you see, it's very easy to judge a book by its cover and there are plenty of unfavorable stereotypes that negatively affect minorities.

There are many African Americans who believe white people, in general, hate them because of their race. I know there are because they'll say things in my presence they will never say in yours (unless they're really angry). By the same token, I've either overheard things from white people I wasn't supposed to hear or been told by another white person who was frustrated that they had to hear it (because they don't feel the same way), that exposed the extremely low level of respect for people on the singular basis of race. Why do I have to be a "nigger" when this person knows nothing about me? And why, when I wasn't even thinking about him at all, did he have to be thinking about me in negative sense?

I've had more than my fair share of run ins with racism, from drunk people, to children (with and without parents present), and it's truly sickening. But what's almost more sickening is how, when black people try to tell the society that says "liberty and justice for all" that we have a wide spread problem that involves race, white people want to INSTEAD of fixing the problem, act as if black protesters are the problem and proceed to operate in a counter-fashion to what we're trying to do to protect ourselves. And we wouldn't even have to say "Black lives matter" if we felt that they matter to white people. Think about the statement! I don't have to say black lives matter to other black people. That would be stupid. You only say it when it is in question. Black Lives Matter is a statement that is the answer to the question, "do black lives matter [to you]"? If I'm bringing my car to the shop and I say "my car needs an axle" and the mechanic's response is "all cars need an axle" do you understand that I'm going to have to resist the urge to punch the guy in the face? And I'm not a violent person. I don't have a short fuse at all. I don't literally mean I want to punch everyone who makes smart ass comments. I'm simply telling you how I would feel in regards to a comment that is obviously a smart ass remark that has no value to the needs of MY car. I'm paying you to fix MY car, not all cars. So even this idea that "it's about accuracy", no it's really not. That's just an excuse. The idea that we need to think about all the ways in which white people might get offended or might misunderstand or misrepresent something we're doing for a GOOD CAUSE is utterly ridiculous (imho). Even children are told, "if you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all".

I have a lot of respect for Malcolm X but not very much for the Nation of Islam. Some of his rhetoric, at the time, wasn't beneficial and yet I could feel where he was coming from. His approach was more rigid than MLK and definitely more reactive. Both MLK and Malcolm X were unpopular with whites in their time and both are honored and respected today. But at the time both were attacked with criticisms because people wanted to stop what they were doing. Now that it's history, and had some positive results, all of a sudden criticism is no longer fashionable. We're talking about a reaction to a large number of people, not just being treated unfairly like some schoolyard bully, but rather people getting lynched, murdered, etc.

In another thread a member talked about getting off the bus at the wrong stop and how fortunate it was that he had a gun and how prepared he was to use it against members of a gang who had blunt objects. He felt he needed to be armed in case of a situation in which he could receive bodily harm and possibly kill those with the intent to harm him before they got the chance to do so; based on the potential harm and feeling like his life was in danger.

I can empathize with him but it's harder for me and only goes so far because the idea that deadly force is the way to stop someone from potentially hurting you has never been an acceptable option for minorities. My best friends father had to flee the south because he was told, after beating up a white man who was harassing and physically assaulting him, that he was going to be killed. If I told you his story in 2017 you'd think I was talking about a gang when it's a story about white people in the South.

Black people have been in this situation, suffering in relative silence, for a long time; a situation where many whites wore hoods to conceal the fact that they were members of law enforcement. We have Mark Fuhrman on tape talking about how they would treat black people. We have cops on tape planting evidence against us. We have cops on tape beating us. We have cops on tape shooting first without any questions; even kids. The only difference now is that we have more evidence because of cell phones capturing what has been happening this whole time. But before, we didn't have youtube to share stories or cameras to capture evidence. Imagine all the cases of abuse that must have gone on before. And the fact that we do have cameras and social media should scare the police and make them stop doing these things but they're clearly so used to it... it's impossible. And they're not just used to committing these crimes against black people but they're used to getting away with it. That's why they do it.

Accuracy? Too often the "desire to be accurate" allows cops to get away with murder. Accurate is a relatively subjective concept. The reason people even challenge what's said is because they have a bias and don't want to believe it. So then they start looking for alternative answers that are more fitting with what they want to believe. In some cases people react before they get the full story, before they get all the facts. In the OJ trial, the nation was split because before he could be found guilty or not, most people had already made up their minds that he was guilty. Accuracy wasn't more important in their emotional outrage than their desire for justice. And guess what? It never is. Accuracy is always secondary which is why there are many black people who are executed by the State who were actually innocent. But as a society we overlook accuracy in these cases where people suffer the ultimate consequence but suddenly we want to be accurate in 100% of cases when it comes to defending the police. And in doing so people ignore and overlook the fact that BLM is not a product of 1 or 2 cases of misconduct, but rather a consistent trend over many years that the nation hasn't noticed but that the black community doesn't have the opportunity to ignore.

Should we shoot first based on our fears? The black panthers were demonized for even being armed and offering protection for their community against the police. How many people today stop to ask the question... "why would they feel so threatened by our police forces to the point of arming themselves like a militia in accordance with the 2nd Amendment?" Why do they feel it's THAT bad? Today, instead of doing what the Black Panther's did (who also had education, food, clinics, and other programs to help the community: http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/03/26/8-black-panther-party-programs-that-were-more-empowering-than-federal-government-programs/) we protest in the most non-violent ways we possibly can. Antifa were the ones who were armed, not BLM. It doesn't seem to matter what we do in protest. It's always wrong, but years later, when it can be shown to have had a positive impact, it will be seen as necessary and maybe even heroic.

Lykeios wrote: I am not racist.

You are white: you cant NOT BE racist. You are racist because, as a white person, you benefit from a racist system.
Even if youre not racist on purpose, youre unconsciously racist and thats still racist. (Even though the IAT has been debunked)



Not only that, but youre also part of the only racial group that CAN be racist: whites. No person of any other racial group is even capable of being racist no matter how much individual authority they have in society because their group identity doesnt hold the institutional power necessary to make racism possible.

http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/20/ohio-state-workshop-tells-students-only-whites-can-be-racists/



I am not exaggerating or mis-characterizing the rhetoric one bit. This is hte problem with BLM and all the other extreme leftist movements right now which are claiming social justice and equality. They are fundamentally racist themselves, irrational and divisive. They increase the amount of racism in the world instead of decreasing it.

Bill Cosby


Right off the bat, here is my bias...

The idea that Bill Cosby would sexually assault women is uncomfortable to me partially because he is a noteworthy member of my community.

That being said, there were a lot of allegations that made him seem guilty. There were too many to ignore. Once so many women were speaking out most people, black people included, had already concluded at least some degree of guilt.

Why is this relevant to BLM? Well let's see...

In more than a few cases the women LIED.

Now already, if there was no hypocrisy in America, the entire case against Cosby should have been endlessly and mercilessly attacked. People should have been outraged that the Cosby show was taken off air and Cosby punished financially, etc.

No, anyone who was lying was ignored for the chance that even one of the women were telling the truth.

How much time did most people spend trying to debunk the case? The only reason I know about the many lies and inaccuracies is because of my bias working in Bill's favor. When Michael Jackson was on trial in the media and in just about every social circle I had a bias then too, but I had less connection with MJ because honestly I was young and thought he was weird. And honestly... he was weird. But when I thought he might be innocent I defended him. It's not impossible that human beings didn't look at MJ and Cosby and see dollar signs. In fact, I would venture to say that most people who don't exploit others still occasionally have the thought about how they could. In fact, in the case of Cosby, there was a woman who came out in an interview saying that someone tried to pay her to seduce and set Cosby up. Maybe she was lying. That's possible. But she didn't have a motive to lie. And suddenly all these things were coming out about Cosby so many years after anything allegedly happened?

"Oh Bill Cosby was too powerful!" No, at the time, he wasn't. And the thought of a white woman getting sexually assaulted by a black man... there is no amount of power Cosby could have ever had to negate that. Whole communities of black people were burned down over such allegations.

But jokes about Bill Cosby drugging women flooded the internet. I wont lie. I made a few myself.

The only thing that Cosby ever admitted to were drugs that many people were doing at time voluntarily. Today, people go to the clubs, pass around a little ecstasy or whatever. That's what people do. I wouldn't. Maybe you wouldn't. But to a lot of people that's what partying means; getting intoxicated and doing things they wouldn't do sober. I used to be a fierce opponent of men getting women drunk in bars. I was young and in my young mind I saw the men as predators and the women as prey. I mean why do you need to intoxicate a woman by buying her multiple drinks if she was going to sleep with you anyway? To me that still sounds perfectly logical, and yet, what I know about women now makes it far more complex. Women often go to bars for that exact outcome to happen. Maybe they'll regret who they slept with later and use the 'beer goggles' excuse but they went there wanting to have sex and they willingly participated in lowering their inhibitions in a society that tends to unfairly denigrate women for being promiscuous.

No one knows this better than iconic entertainers. They have human bodies thrown at them while others have to pay for it in different ways. Sometimes, their name alone is enough to get them laid.

Now make no mistake about it. Bill Cosby can have all the mistrials he wants. He could even be found completely not guilty. However, we all know he's destroyed because of this and there is no hope of rehabilitating his image. MAYBE after he dies some prominent reporter will dig into the women and try to figure out what happened. And let's be clear. Many of these women aren't saying they were raped by Cosby but rather that he did something they felt at the time was inappropriate.

But the point is, that the mere effect of having so many people speak out against one man.... done. Destroyed.

Evidence ignored. Accuracy not important. The accusers were treated like they were victims.

Many, many, many, many black people have spoken out against bad cops in an environment in which black men especially do not feel safe. One black woman's fear was so heightened that she was completely irrational and precipitated her own death in front of her child (even though one could argue that killing her was avoidable). In this case the bias of America is exposed. The victims who were killed are treated like accusers. Their blood cries out to the rest of us for justice, but... for many people they just have to find some criticism to justify the officer's use of deadly force. On one hand, it doesn't effect them, but on the other hand... I think the reality is that they could imagine themselves pulling the trigger. They could imagine themselves feeling threatened by that situation. They can empathize with the cops based on their own unspoken fear.

But here's an interesting statistic...

Statistics show that 1 in 4 women in the US is a victim of domestic violence, those numbers jump to 1 in 2 if they are married to a cop.

Police beat their OWN wives or girlfriends at DOUBLE the national rate and they're the ones who are trained to deescalate situations?! If you're willing to do that to someone you love... what would you do to someone you hate? What would you do to someone who you think is responsible for most of the crime? Last time I checked, domestic violence and abuse was criminal. Could they be doing it possibly because they have more of a chance to see themselves as above the law? Is that possible? And if that's possible how might they bend or break the law when pursuing someone who they desire to see as being a worse person than them?

Time out for accuracy... am I saying all police beat their wives? Of course not. I shouldn't have to say this, but apparently I do.

We have police officers with motive. We know that power corrupts and police officers have a lot of power to enforce laws. We also know that there is a financial motive to bring in money for their districts as well as quotas that incentivize racial profiling. We know all these things.

But when its one man like Bill Cosby or Michael Jackson and many accusers they MUST be guilty while the police... according to the bias of most Americans, must be given the benefit of the doubt, and gotta be super accurate because maybe this big black guy thought he could kill 3-4 trained police officers with his bare hands and then flee to avoid arrest. You've seen the Hulk. Maybe a black guy in a car was thinking, rather than getting a ticket, let me just murder this white cop with a kid in the back seat. Maybe this little black kid in a park was about to go on some kind of terrorist rampage like some kind of child soldier version of Terminator.

We go out on a limb to defend the police when there are hundreds of current allegations and so many past allegations that black people would laugh at the idea of keeping count. So let's be honest. There is an overt bias against BLM because there is a covert bias against black people. We can all sit here and come up with justifications or we can accept the truth that is reflected in both personal and institutional racism. There is a bias against black people that predetermines guilt to the extent that black people are guilty until proven innocent and we are thought to be predators until you get to know us. And until you do, ironically, it is we who are the prey. And every white person isn't uniformly guilty but most people, of all races, spend a lot of time looking the other way. And that... is why we protest.

Much respect and love to the many people on this forum who are not racist or who have a very low degree of bias. It's not about being perfect. It's about working together for a more perfect union. As much as I might seem agitated or heated on this subject, I have to be more passionate and long-winded because there are not many voices here who are like mine. And being in the minority position makes it very difficult to be heard or understood because so many seem to oppose whatever it is you're trying to say. But I do appreciate the vast majority of you who let me say what I have to say without complaining too much about how inartfully I may at times say it. And maybe there is a better way. But until we know what that is we can only do the best we know how to do.