Occasionally, people who say Black Lives Matter actually do say "All Lives Matter" while stressing that it is because All Lives Matter that people are saying that Black Lives Matter. This is not the vast majority of people who say All Lives Matter; the vast majority of people who say All Lives Matter really are saying that police brutality against black people is good. It is not semantically saying that, but rather symbolically saying that. Because what they are typically doing is dismissing the idea that Black Lives Matter.
National Guard called into Minneapolis
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Yes, that's right. They're aware of stuff going on in the world such as protests against police brutality and that these terms are getting thrown around, but they often don't necessarily get a lot more of the fine detail. This is often the way - superficial knowledge of stuff going on, but little depth.
For instance, there's a substantial, tolerated niche in India of admiration for Hitler and Naziism, in ways that would appal the average European or North American. I mean, some Indians have things like SS bumper stickers on their cars. A lot of the reason for this is that knowledge and cultural context of 6+ million murdered Jews, Roma etc. is far, far less - and even where it exists, that's just something Europeans did.
Really? Really?
Firstly, BLM was a localised US response to attitudes to black people being killed, without I suspect any reasonable expectation it would go global. Judging it harshly because it doesn't necessarily translate globally when that was almost certainly never intended is more than a little unfair.
Secondly, no-one paid professional PR companies a few million to come up with that. It was effectively a spontaneous creation from a few grassroots activists that happened to snowball in social media. It's again absurd and unfair to criticise it for not being some sort of finely tuned, cast-iron, polished construction.
Have you met, or talked with, anyone who believes this?
Or do you believe that because that's what the media has told you?
If I search for #AllLivesMatter in twitter, it's about 70% people dunking on #AllLivesMatter, and 29% people taking the words at face-value by saying "all lives matter".
I'm leaving the 1% there to leave room for the actual racists who actually think that police brutality against black people is good. I haven't found them yet, though.
In that 29% I DO see a pro-police rally, from "Now This". They're waving signs saying something like 99% of cops are good. I don't see them saying that "police brutality against black people is good".
So what do you think? Are these people supporting police brutality?
And if you think that, is that because of what they've said, and because of the signs they're holding up? Or is this another case of "words don't mean what they mean"?
And that's where the slogan messes up. It doesn't have legs. It can't travel. It has to be wheeled around by a BLM representative who can properly explain to you how words don't really mean what they mean.
And it's not even a culture gap. Americans in the USA have trouble understanding how BLM isn't divisive and exclusionary. That's why all these comics and memes have been made, to re-educate people that "black lives matter" doesn't mean "only black lives matter", but "black lives matter too", and that "all lives matter" doesn't mean "all lives matter", or that it's somehow racist or delegitimizing. These are Americans from the same culture trying to educate their neighbors because their slogan alone doesn't sufficiently convey the intended meaning.
So this problem can't merely be explained away by saying "they're an ocean away".
Slogans should be clearly understood by everyone who sees them, without needing any further explanation.
It's not even about "going global". The slogan was divisive and exclusionary from the beginning. By making it about one race in particular, you've just excluded everyone else. It's not that it doesn't translate globally, it doesn't even translate locally. Hence why you need an official BLM representative to explain it to you.
Look at MLK's quotes and slogans. They were often things that everyone could get behind. They were mostly racially-neutral. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere". "Let freedom ring".
Heck, the civil rights movement? It's not called the "Black rights movement" for good reason.
Well, they're getting tons of donations now. Maybe it's time to hire one and rebrand.
I dunno, if they start a race war because of this, I'm gonna blame them.
The words mean exactly what they mean. To misconstrue it as an exclusive sentiment, you have to add the word "only", which isn't originally present.
There is no genuine misunderstanding. Anybody with adequate reading comprehension and a baseline understanding of context knows exactly what is intended. The detractors know exactly what is intended too: they're merely exploiting a facile semantic argument, because the moral argument has no credibility.
I think these people are willing to tolerate a certain level of police brutality, provided its only against black people, in the interests of maintaining "law and order".
I don't know about you, but personally I don't see how that is functionally different to supporting police brutality.
I think we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard, and what is it that America has failed to hear?
I'm really sick of white MLK. He's an obnoxious, sanctimonious and ineffectual person who fortunately wasn't real, and exists only in the minds of the white moderates who the real MLK rightly detested and feared.
The real MLK was a courageous person who spoke plainly about the monstrous conditions of injustice in which he was being asked to live and was not afraid to hold his nation and its white population to account. He was not a simpering idiot who rambled vacantly about having a dream and sagely lectured black people on the need to accommodate themselves to their oppressors.
If Martin Luther King had not been assassinated. If his voice had not been permanently silenced and had he remained an outspoken man instead of a placid symbol of the vague idea that racism is bad, you wouldn't be using his name to shut down his own ideals, and we'd probably be living in a much better timeline.
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Which I suppose is why cop unions, PBA's, and both types of FOP's just keep letting those bad apples slip through the cracks, while defending them from criminal charges, termination, suspension, or really any sort of negative consequence whatsoever, and being a persistent and influential source of pressure against any sort of substantive reform, transparency, or accountability. Or how that "good boy" 99% never actually take substantive action to condemn or root out those bad apples.
How many officers are striking, calling blue flus, or laying down their badges in protest of police brutality or abuses of power, especially compared to those doing it in solidarity with perpetrators of hate crimes? Or, cooperating with federal law enforcement to investigate white nationalist group infiltration of municipal and county police departments?
Good cops exist about as much as unicorns. If you're in, you're complicit.
I'm not talking about adding "only". Consider the example of the Indians. "Black Lives Matter" doesn't work for them because they aren't black. If you have a white person killed by police brutality, "Black Lives Matter" doesn't work for them either. Neither does it work for Hispanics, or any other non-'black' ethnicity.
It's exclusionary because it's about "black lives".
Your logic is like saying "'White Power' doesn't mean ONLY power to whites! You're just misconstruing it."
And what makes you think that? Something that they've said? A sign they were holding up? Did they say that they think the officer(s) who killed George Floyd did nothing wrong?
He also said "Riots are self defeating and socially destructive"
There's a difference between explaining and justifying.
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The only reason most Americans might need it explained is either that a) they've been living under a rock for the last few years or b) they're deliberately trying to be a dick because they oppose it.
Seriously, it's exactly like arguing that the Republican Party needs to rebrand because its name is stupid. After all, you can't get any sense of its pro-business, small government and socially conservative policies just from the name "Republican Party", and who knows how anyone could possibly recognise what it stands for without an official Republican Party spokesperson to explain it.
Just type #AllLivesMatter into twitter and see how many well-meaning people there are using the hashtag by taking the words at face value. Some people even use both hashtags at once. Try it and see.
I agree. Horrible names, really.
King’s non-violence was tactical and based on the non-violence of Ghandi. That non-violence worked because it violated the law and caused extremely expensive work for the British Empire. King preached civil disobedience, he literally called for people to ignore and disobey legal authorities and stage illegal protests, which are what the police at the time and today call riots. He would not be here mourning a damn Target. He would be calling for justice for the oppressed. And he never had any respect for the police who brutalized him or the authorities who regularly threatened his life and his family.
They definitely aren't for reform or accountability or new regulations. They think things are fine as they are.
The intention of the slogan is not to address all police brutality everywhere. It is to point out a specific discrepancy in treatment towards black people.
The words mean exactly what they say.
In order to draw that conclusion, one would have to be entirely ignorant of the historical and cultural context. One would have to view them in a complete context vacuum.
White Power... was also just turning a slogan used by black Americans against them? George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Neo-Nazi movement, thought it would do better than his typical rhetoric of Swastikas, Free Speech, Jewish-Bolshevism, and regular racism. It did take a while for his protégés to mainstream it as a slogan though.
I kinda love that you’re just proving how much of a mark you are for White Nationalists because of your dogged determination to consider all things devoid of context and empirical fact and only consider what could literally be interpreted by the words or argument, with lenience granted to racists in these interpretations but never to the oppressed. It’s kinda hilarious and reaffirms my confidence that liberal rationalism and associated ideologies are devoid of value.
Okay, I haven't said anything about this yet because I wanted to make sure some personal friends were okay, but in case you guys haven't heard someone opened fire at the BLM/Breonna Taylor protest yesterday, killing one person and injuring another.
I'm giving my friends some respectful distance and waiting to get back to me, considering they were just shot at yesterday and all, but frankly this whole thing is sketch AF. The guy who did the shooting is a known agitator who had been apprehended for disorderly multiple times and released, who had been identified by protesters as an agitator and, as far as I know, LMPD had been made aware he was a potentially armed and dangerous person. I've heard a couple different things about whether or not he's homeless or a possible white supremacist, and I'm waiting to hear back from someone who researches and strategically identifies local white supremacists for more concrete information about that.
But at the same time, yesterday police presence in and around Jefferson Square had been noticeably reduced. Maybe coincidence maybe not, but definitely noteworthy considering LMPD has had a constant, persistent presence in the area, up to and including "two-man armed surveillance teams" on nearby rooftops. Either way, that it took the LMPD "four minutes" to respond to shots being fired, and only arrived on the scene once the shooter was already down, is demonstrable bullshit.
All the same, the LMPD and the municipal government has taken it upon themselves to clear the park and take everything in it, up to and including electronic equipment and personal effects, as "evidence". And by "taken as evidence" I mean "vandalized and sent to the county dump".
I'm giving my friends some respectful distance and waiting to get back to me, considering they were just shot at yesterday and all, but frankly this whole thing is sketch AF. The guy who did the shooting is a known agitator who had been apprehended for disorderly multiple times and released, who had been identified by protesters as an agitator and, as far as I know, LMPD had been made aware he was a potentially armed and dangerous person. I've heard a couple different things about whether or not he's homeless or a possible white supremacist, and I'm waiting to hear back from someone who researches and strategically identifies local white supremacists for more concrete information about that.
But at the same time, yesterday police presence in and around Jefferson Square had been noticeably reduced. Maybe coincidence maybe not, but definitely noteworthy considering LMPD has had a constant, persistent presence in the area, up to and including "two-man armed surveillance teams" on nearby rooftops. Either way, that it took the LMPD "four minutes" to respond to shots being fired, and only arrived on the scene once the shooter was already down, is demonstrable bullshit.
All the same, the LMPD and the municipal government has taken it upon themselves to clear the park and take everything in it, up to and including electronic equipment and personal effects, as "evidence". And by "taken as evidence" I mean "vandalized and sent to the county dump".
So, All Lives Matter, then? That's treating everyone equally, right? No?
So "Black" means "everyone", and "All" means "police brutality is good", hmm, I see...
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Do you believe every movement must address all social ills simultaneously, and expend equal effort in all directions, else they're being "divisive and exclusionary"?
"Help for Heroes" is "divisive and exclusionary" for raising money only for veterans? The campaign against modern slavery is "divisive and exclusionary" because it only focuses on ending modern slavery? Children in Need is "divisive and exclusionary" because it only focuses on children?
It's a nonsensical, untenable standard.
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