So it wasn’t okay for MLK Jr and his organizations to focus on rights for black people?
BLM is fight for a good cause. This stuff NEEDS to be talked about.
Unfortunately, the leaders in the organization have no fucking clue what they are doing.
It’s just sad.
The people who need to read that article aren’t going to do so. Because if it was that easy to get the truth in their heads, they wouldn’t be perseverating on this topic with Rain Man-like obnoxiousness.
I think you are correct. There doesn’t seem to be a clearly expressed goal, which as a result allows their opponents to re-characterize them. That is something that can be corrected though, and not uncommon as a movement develops.
Builds up to a claim that “When we say ‘Black Lives Matter,’ understand what that actually means. We aren’t saying that ONLY Black Lives Matter. We’re saying ‘Black Lives Matter TOO.’”
So he seems to get that “Black Lives Matter” can be taken either way, and wants to explain that he’s saying TOO; he capitalizes it and everything. He could do that by actually sticking a “TOO” on the end, or by swapping “Black” for “All” – but he’d rather say that Black Lives Matter, and just imply that all other lives matter too.
Maybe you’d accept that from a guy who chants that “White Lives Matter” – if he adds that he doesn’t mean “ONLY White Lives Matter”; he means that all other lives matter TOO, he’d just, y’know, rather say that White Lives Matter, and imply the rest?
(Again, if either of them said that All Lives Matter, neither of them would have to imply anything; they wouldn’t have to rule out an “ONLY” interpretation, sure as they’d make a “TOO” unnecessary.)
What’s he done is explained–through telling a chronological summary of relevant life events so painstakingly simple even a 8-year old could get it–why Black Lives Matters is a fitting slogan for a cause that is still quite necessary, even in the year 2016. By the time you get to the end of the article, it should be obvious why the phrase can’t be taken “either way”…that is, unless you’re being willfully obtuse about the existence of anti-black racism. Which is exactly what ALM is about.
That you seem to interpret his article as a defense for not “getting it” only confirms this. You know damn well and good that blacks are dealing with biases that subject them to abuses other groups don’t have to deal with to the same degree, but rather than acknowledge this struggle, this endless fight to be seen as a real people worthy of respect and fair treatment in the eyes of the law, you’re getting hung up on the absence of TOO and ALL in a fucking hashtag.
Why in the fuck can you not see how absurd this fixation is?
This whole conversation reminds me of how some simpletons couldn’t let go of how awful a term “cisgender” was. It was oppressing them or something, not to mention sexist / racist / specie-ist / what-the-hell-ever-ist. No, it’s not that they don’t get it, it’s that hide behind their bullshit rhetoric to make others jump through hoops, all the while using that to cover something in themselves. I can only guess at just what that it. :rolleyes:
He’s the one who felt the need to build up to explaining that, no, it doesn’t mean that ONLY Black Lives Matter; it means that Black Lives Matter TOO. (He’s the one who capitalized the TOO part!) He apparently didn’t think it was obvious; he apparently thought it needed to be spelled out! In all caps!
If it was already obvious, why do you think he spelled it out in all caps?
How am I getting hung up on it? First off, he explicitly mentioned TOO and ALL, in capital letters just like that, to make his point clear; and, second, I didn’t then follow up by saying he should add a TOO or switch to an ALL.
I noted that he could make the same point by doing either of those things, but not to suggest that he make that switch: I did it to point out that folks who state what he’s implying, by saying that All Lives Matter, may well have just as little racism.
What fixation? I’m merely against calling the All Lives Matter folks racist.
I think your wording here suggests an effort to stay within the rules, but ultimately, saying that people remind you of simpletons and liars is really the same thing as calling them simpletons and liars. Let’s not go there.
What about people who don’t know what cisgender means? Should they be demeaned for not knowing the meaning of word recently made up that makes no sense to anyone until it’s defined for them?
After you said that you’d clarified your thinking, and that it wasn’t as flawed as the caricature I painted, I looked back and found only this — which exactly confirms my explanation of your flaw. 
And here you proudly produce the pedantry that BLM supporters think MLK was racist for pursuing equality. :rolleyes: Reread my post and the others carefully and fight your ignorance.
You read that article and this is your take-away? :eek:
Messrs. Pepper and Thoughts need to report to the Pit for more explicit education.
He capitalized it because it’s already obvious. Let me put it like this: The TOO is implicit but obvious. Now see how I emphasized this sentence by putting in italics? The italics don’t serve as a apology for being unclear. They don’t mean the first statement in this paragraph was ambiguous in any way whatsoever. The italics serve as a device to drive home a point, much like a nail going through a thick skull. Capitalization can be used in the same way.
The author is simply putting to text what is already obvious to everyone, even the minority of people who persist in pretending its not obvious. Yup, even them.
The only thing NOT obvious is why this minority thinks (feigning) the inability to grasp nuanced speech means its a negative reflection on other people’s communication skills rather than a negative reflection on their own cognitive abilities. That, to me, is the biggest head scratcher out of all of this. If everyone is saying the “too” is silent and you keep insisting it needs to be explicit for that to be clear to you, you’re basically announcing the need for remedial education in language skills. Which is embarrassing to watch.
Dumb people’s lives matter, TOO.
Yep. Likewise accusing people who say it of being racist is also - often - tone deaf.
Not that there aren’t racists who say it, but not everyone who says it is racist by any meaning of the word that doesn’t water it down.
I’m not “pretending” or “feigning” anything. I’m noting that, when he implies a TOO, or puts a big TOO in text in capital letters, he’s expressing the same sentiment that folks can and do mean by All Lives Matter – which is why folks who say All Lives Matter shouldn’t be branded as racists for doing so.
If someone tells me that Black Lives Matter, and implies a “Too” (excuse me; a “TOO”), and someone else explicitly tells me that Black Lives Matter TOO, and someone else tells me that All Lives Matter, then I don’t see why we’d call one of those folks a racist; as far as I can tell, they’re all expressing the same sentiment.
But I’m not saying I need it to be explicit for it to be clear to me; I’m saying one can imply the “too”, and thereby convey the unobjectionable message explicitly made by someone who says (a) Black Lives Matter TOO, or (b) All Lives Matter.
No he’s not expressing the same sentiment. The people who counter BLM by saying All Lives Matter are expressing an implicit message that is not equivalent to saying Black Lives Matter, Too. What ALM is expressing is “Black people need to stop focusing attention on how black people are being harmed by LEO, because this is not a problem worth highlighting as much as other things.” Other things like:
- Black-on-black crime. Because we apparently haven’t talked about this phenomenon at all even though it’s pretty much all we talk about when the subject of urban crime comes up, which is pretty much constantly.
- Coming up with less racist/more precise/more inclusive hashtags other than ‘Black Lives Matter’ " As if the need for wordsmithing is the one thing keeping cops from locking us up and shooting us all the time, yup.
- Pulling up their saggy pants and getting an education already. As if the clothes we wear and the number of degrees we can take credit for will make us immune from profiling, harassment, unlawful stops, and police brutality.
- Not sassing police when all they have to do is do what the officer tells them to do, even at the expense of their civil liberties. As if black people aren’t entitled to civil liberties in the first place; as if compliance in the face of abuse doesn’t enable it to continue; as if the judicial system is the panacea for cops who conspire against citizens.
- Making sure their protests don’t inconvenience people who might otherwise be sympathetic to their cause but don’t like being stuck on the highway for hours at a time. As if the whole point of a protest isn’t to shake people out of their comfort zones, to raise awareness of how a subset of the population is routinely “inconvenienced” by abusive policing.
Because you seem incapable of picking up nuances in language and the context associated with its use. I’m not saying this derisively, just matter-of-factly. And this is not a problem that anyone is obligated to solve for you.
You give folks who say Black Lives Matter the benefit of the doubt by assuming there’s an implicit “TOO” – and you assume that folks who say All Lives Matter are expressing an implicit message to the contrary?
What if the folks who say that All Lives Matter make explicit that, no, they don’t mean that last sentence, the one you claim is implicit?
The guy who specified that he means that Black Lives Matter TOO maybe didn’t need to be explicit, but he did it anyway – but if a guy says that All Lives Matter, and then goes on to explicitly specify that he of course doesn’t mean the implicit message you’re attributing, is that good enough to stop you from assuming he’s a racist with that implicit message?
Well, look, if there in fact are people out there who say All Lives Matter and genuinely don’t mean what you claim they have in mind, then I’m reading them correctly and you’re picking up nuances that aren’t there at all – and, in that case, you’d be picking up some implicit nuance that doesn’t exist, and you’d be getting there by failing to pick up what’s explicit.
I’m saying that matter-of-factly, not derisively, you understand.
It’s not about giving anyone the benefit of the doubt. It’s about having the ability to comprehend implicit messages without needing everything spelled out explicitly.
If I say pregnancy is a not a walk in the park, and a stranger responds by saying “well, being on the hook for unwanted child support for 18 years isn’t a walk in the park”, do you think this just a mutual telling of two difficult life experiences and there is nothing “extra” being communicated by the stranger? “All Lives Matter” usually serves as the same kind of tactic. We weren’t even talking about ALM until BLM entered the stage; that’s your first clue that it’s acting as a rebuttable rather a neutral statement of fact. The second clue is who tends to be the loudest in saying it. Usually it ain’t people with a history for caring about racism, police brutality, or social change.
Yes, only in response to those who persist in attacking the use of “Black Lives Matter” because of a (deliberate) misunderstanding of what it means. Again, you have to look at the context for his remarks to understand the point he is making. If all he wanted to say is that “black lives matter” = “black lives matter, too”, he could have said that without all the background on his life experiences. Instead of an essay, he could submitted a four-sentence paragraph and been over and done with it. So clearly, since he did not do that, a smart reader can infer the reason he provided his anecdotes was to drive home the message that “black lives matter” = “black lives aren’t being treated like they matter and that is why ‘BLM’ is cromulent, please get over yourself”.
I don’t doubt that there are some people who do say ALM without any ill-intent or willful obtuseness. Although most of them are doing it with a loaded agenda, I admit there may be those who do so out of ignorance or naïvete. But the answer to ignorance or naïvete is education, not over indulgence.
You with the face isn’t really giving benefit of the doubt, because the phrase isn’t as ambiguous as you’re trying to make it. Very clearly, they’ve been paying attention to current events, demonstrate an understanding of historical events, and they’re applying the phrase in proper context. I’m positive YWTF didn’t need to read that article, to understand the author’s point or “implied” usage of the phrase.
It’s definitely a reactionary, dismissive response, intended to remove (literally) a core factor (race) from the issue(s) at hand. Some people appear to have stumbled into current events, while others have convinced themselves of some alternative meaning, but there’s no mistake it’s a phrase used to minimize and distract.
The interpretation that only black lives matter, doesn’t make sense, since it (BLM) is most often voiced when a black person faces questionable mistreatment by an authority/component of the justice system. If people were yelling “BLM!” in response to other groups confronted with similar or even different circumstances, there would be a stronger case for calling such behavior insensitive. As it is, the primary phrase being used to shut-down grievances by a group of people, is the ALM response to BLM.
If you honestly believe all lives matter, you wouldn’t be splitting hairs over an implied “only” or “too”. Even if we were truly confused over its meaning, we live in an age where some explanation is a mobile or desktop screen away, meaning, we should have little issue clarifying the actual intent before condemning it for what it’s not.