All Lives Matter

[ignoramus]

The Kalamata growers of America have a banner over their head office which reads:

BACK OLIVES MATTER!



How rude!

[bennyboy]

lol that's both rude AND funny.

[ignoramus]

Fuck, just realised I wrote BACK, not BLACK! (why do I always wreck my own jokes? sheesh)

[Silver]

At this point Kit is just being obtuse for either lulz or because he's too much of a coward to admit when he was wrong.

I believe I am not wrong.

[Edwardo Piet]

Your beliefs are irrelevant.

[Silver]

I used to be an "All Lives Matter" proponent because my egalitarian beliefs automatically want to push for equality over focused inequality. I changed my mind when I read a really good (at least in my opinion) metaphor, which I'll repeat in a moment. Suffice to say, "All Lives Matter" is the overall goal, nobody
disputes that. The reason the "Black Lives Matter" movement exists is to focus on the fact that at this moment in time, black lives are treated, or at least are seen to be treated as less valuable.


So anyway, onto the metaphor that changed my mind:

Suppose you are at a family dinner, and the patriarch / matriarch is serving up dessert. He/she heaps a portion of dessert onto everyone's plate except for your own. You complain "Hey, I didn't get any dessert, I should get some too." The rest of the family looks at you and hushes you. "EVERYONE should get dessert" they say.

The underlying point is that you're still left without dessert, but your family are too focused on the overall issue of everyone getting dessert to even notice / care about your plight.

It's fine to be egalitarian about things, and recognize that inequality affects most people in some way, but sometimes you need to view things through a narrow lens. You can't solve every inequality at once, so you need to do them one by one. That's why multiple groups exist.

Of course, with that in mind, I honestly get the impression that saying "Black lives matter" isn't much better in this regard. Taking the dinner metaphor to its logical conclusion, it's like replying "of course, you'll get dessert" AND NEVER ACTUALLY GETTING IT. And then, when it's over, you ask about it and they actively deny having denied you of your dessert.

To be honest, if they really mattered on any socially meaningful way, the movement wouldn't need to keep reminding people of the fact. And, of course, the point of the phrase is generally treated as a reminder to the powers that be of a fact they seem to have forgotten. Except I don't think they've forgotten it. I think they just don't care. And they probably never did. Hell, that was the point of the Ice-T video "No Lives Matter" I linked to earlier.

What the phrase should be is "WHY DON'T BLACK LIVES MATTER?" It goes right for the jugular and points out the problem in an unambiguous way that bypasses the whole semantical niggling we've spent all this time trying to unpack, and it's a lot less empty a statement than either "black lives matter" or "all lives matter."

Indeed.

---

Your beliefs are irrelevant.

Just as is your belief that my belief is irrelevant. See how that works.

[Edwardo Piet]

Just as is your belief that my belief is irrelevant.  See how that works.

That's irrelevant. The point is that all our beliefs are irrelevant but the difference is your logic and inability to understand the logical arguments on this thread is an epic fail on your part.

It's not the beliefs that matter. It's the logic (or lack thereof, in your case) behind them that matter. That's the point.

[FFaith]

People go with "All Lives Matter" because of the many black supremacists out there who think that white lives are worthless, or that we're pretty much all devils. Even Laci Green, who is a major SJW who shits on her own race, is now turned away as an ally of the black community just because she's willing to hear other people out that have a different opinion from her own.

I'm not saying blacks don't have reason to be angry, because they do and I sympathize with much of that anger, but racism coming from blacks is still racism and should be discouraged. If anyone thinks it's a good idea to tell blacks that it's not possible for them to be racist, I wonder what you think about the recent "No Whites Allowed Day" at Evergreen college. You tell blacks that it's not humanly possible for them to be racist, and this is the result you get. You tell them that nothing they can possibly say or do against whites, even torturing them, is racist, and this is what you end up with. People getting attacked. "Days of Absence" where white people are not allowed to attend. White school staff being held hostage while being given demands by young adults who act more like preschoolers. Anything goes.

[Edwardo Piet]

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[FFaith]

Was that facepalm to me? Personally I think the name Black Lives Matter is a fine name. I like it and don't really think it can be improved upon. What I was saying is, that when you have so many blacks (who I think are more racist than whites on average) putting down white people in general, that is going to cause a lot of white people to troll the BLM slogan with "All Lives Matter" signs and such, as a way of pointing out that "hey, you BLM guys don't really think that all lives matter either, like you are accusing the police of". Many others just think All Lives Matter makes sense too though and are not doing it to troll the black supremacists in BLM. For instance, there are I think more than a dozen black celebs who have tweeted the All Lives Matter slogan.

All I'm doing here is discouraging racism, whether that be white supremacy or black supremacy. They are both wrong. I very much understand that blacks are disadvantaged in society and I want things to improve for them. I'm not just going to say "fuck them, they're huge racists". Instead I say, I understand your anger, so let's address your concerns and make things better for the black community, so you have less of a reason to be so racist in the future. I want to fix the racism of black people by helping them and addressing their legitimate concerns (although I disagree with them about Mike Brown and some cases like that, but they still have many legitimate concerns).