“All lives matter” is like “I don’t see color.” It’s not about the mattering of any lives. It’s designed to prevent questioning which would tend to expose privilege. It’s not necessarily even conscious. It’s a glib shutting down of the lived experience of suffering of another person, whose suffereing benefitted you indirectly.
It’s not innocent. It’s a manic denial in the same way that Republicans lament that they don’t want to think about color, or that it’s really the Dems who are (reverse) racist etc etc.
BLM deserves an anti-slogan, because it is a neo-Marxist political cult whose end goal is the abolition of capitalism & liberal democracy. Let’s not mince words. Simply read the holy texts of the movement- such as White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, How to Be Anti-racist by Ibram X. Kendi, and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Really read them. Understand what they ultimately are.
A black man has a roughly 1 in 1,000 chance to be killed by police. A white man has a roughly 1 in 2,000 chance to be killed by police. Stark numbers huh? But if you continue to read the data you discover that any woman has a roughly 1 in 33,000 chance to be killed by police, with no real statistical difference between races. Weird. It’s almost as if it’s men as a whole who are being targeted by police. https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793
Furthermore, more white people get shot by cops every year than any other race. These are just basic raw numbers. So why on earth would anyone of any political persuasion want to peddle a a giant racist conspiracy theory about a police war on black people? Why would you racialize the issue of police brutality & alienate white people, many of who thanks to a combination of ignorance & propaganda have no idea how many young white men die at the hands of cops every year? Congratulations on turning such a basic issue thst affects EVERYONE into yet another racialized culture war, which is what this country does best I guess.
But that’s the ultimate goal of BLM. It’s not about police reform or justice in the criminal justice system. It’s an identity movement that radicalizes young people who have been let down their whole lives by the clowns we call leaders, and the fossilized institutions that are incapable & unwilling to confront basic problems that affect normal people. Political cults like BLM & MAGA exist because the US experiment is failing, and the collapse is accelerating thanks to the bizarro version of reality people are drenched in on the internet & social media. Look forward to more radicalized cults popping up over the next few years.
Interesting opinion you have there. I heard Ms. DiAngelo touting her book on the radio, and I was thinking about reading it when the library opens up again. She seemed pretty far out there, to me at least.
But to get back on point, I think most centrists would agree that the far left loses them when they get into neo-Marxism and the abolition of capitalism and liberal democracy. That kind of radicalism is pretty much the definition of you-are-no-longer-in-centrist-land. Whether Black Lives Matter amounts to such a movement, I think that debate belongs in another thread, but suffice to say you are the first I have heard characterize it as so.
For most reasonable people, no one had a problem with kneeling during the national anthem. What we (I) found problem with was that that kneeling (protest) came at a company event, on company time.
Kneel on your own time or face the consequences of protesting during working hours, and he did.
Punish someone for a public protest on company time and face the consequences as well …
NFL honchos did not suddenly have an epiphany about racism. They had an epiphany about which side it has become better business to be aligned with.
Anyway I am posting mainly to acknowledge my being in error … it happens. There is now I think a much wider understanding of what “Black Lives Matters” fully means and how responding to that statement with a knee-jerk “All Lives Matter” (stop) is the racists’ trolling response. I am realizing that we would not have gotten to this place as quickly as we have with my proposed tactic.
Yes, current events placing a focus on the movement impacted that as well, but my error stands as the error it was still.
Yes, “All Lives Matter” is used as a glib way to troll BLM supporters. But BLM supporters should not take the bait: DSeid was right about that, even if he has rethought his position.
What really bothers me is the way John Hickenlooper has been said by virtually everyone in the media to have made some kind of serious gaffe for a much more nuanced reply that was too close to “All Lives Matter” for the comfort of some:
1st Question
What have the men had done to combat systemic racism?
Hickenlooper said it all goes back to slavery. “Slavery is the nagging, persistent shame of our country. That for too long has denied the promise of America to too many of our citizens. That evolution to create two systems of justice. I mean, even after slavery, we went to Jim Crow and then forced servitude, institutionalized terrorism, which was what the lynchings were really all about.”
Hickenlooper referenced Paul Childs, a 15 -year -old developmentally disabled youth who was shot and killed by a Denver police officer in 2003 shortly after Hickenlooper was elected mayor of Denver. Childs was holding a knife and his family had called the police to their home for help. Hickenlooper said Childs’ death led to “some of the most comprehensive police reform.”
Hickenlooper was then asked to describe how he views the Black Lives Matter movement.
“Black lives matter means that every life matters and that the color of a person’s skin has nothing to do with the richness of their lives and how important their place and their family and their neighborhood and their community [is],” Hickenlooper said. “That every life is sacred and every life deserves the protections of our system of public safety and our system of justice. People should not be fearful of the people that have been entrusted to protect them.”
I left this place, promising myself to never post here again, but I couldn’t stay away. Did you miss me?
::crickets::
When I first heard “Black Lives Matter,” my first thought was “all lives matter” as well. Then I read some patient person’s explanation that it meant “Black lives matter, too,” thought, “Okay, it’s hard to fit a lot of nuance into a slogan,” and agreed with it. “Fuck you, racist white asshole” wouldn’t have impressed me.
