#Blacklivesmat

[Mister Agenda]

(bold mine)

Dude, their tag isn't #Blacklivesmatterandtheyaretheonlyoneswhosufferoraredeservingofattentionfortheirsuffering.

Then why not #AllLivesMatter? Why use the word black unless you were specifically implying that they need to focus on blacks over anyone else?

Because as a nation we've beein ignoring the fact that black people don't deserve to be shot by cops at 20 times the rate that cops shoot white people, and apparently it needs to be pointed out that black lives matter TOO?

[Mister Agenda]

It's in response to police brutality of black people.

And that's the problem I have with it.

Figures.

[Mister Agenda]

Right, because black people have done worse to black people. You said that already. But how does that solve the police brutality issue? How are the two issues related?

I think you can make a strong case that the disproportionate mistreatment of blacks by police is a contributing factor for high crime rates in black communites. It's hard to respect the law when you know it's frequently being enforced by racist thugs.

On a side note, I think around 2006 the FBI issued a report about white supremacist groups attempting to infiltrate police forces. Maybe they've been successful.

[Mister Agenda]

I never offered a solution to the police brutality issue, I just said that there shouldn't be a focus on any race but all of them. The issue should be over police brutality and racism, not just how bad black people have it. And I didn't know that BLM was apparently formed to address police brutality specifically against blacks. I thought their name was a decent indicator of their cause. But that doesn't take away from the fact that while they are complaining about black people being killed by cops, more black people are being killed by each other. And that to focus on just the cops or incidents of apparent racism is missing the bigger picture.

We should ignore the plight of the people the racism is largely directed at? Are you on drugs?

[Longhorn]

[Faith No More]

The thing with blacklivesmatter and similar hashtags is that people often miss the point - It isn't saying white lives don't matter, or that we shouldn't protest against whites being killed, or that white people are always evil and black people are always good - It is just saying that, in some cases, you are more likely to be shot, killed and suffer violence if you're black, particularly against the police. I can't name every single case in history when a black person suffered at the hands at the police, and while I don't think all of them are due to racism, I also believe some of those people wouldn't have been killed if they were white.

Saying that there's more black on black crime is missing the point - Most crimes are intraracial, meaning that whites get killed by whites more often and blacks by blacks, etc - It makes sense, but it's a whole different topic with no relevance to blacklivesmatter.

There was actually a great segment on The Nightly Show that I can't find that had Thelonious Monk explaining how insisting that it should be "All lives matter" is minimizing the problem that black people are trying to address and quite derogatory to suggest.

I honestly can't understand how someone cannot grasp that "black lives matter" is not a racist slogan, but people whining about it being racist is entirely indicative of why we can't solve our racial problems in the U.S.

[loganonekenobi]

You are missing the context of that situation in Ferguson. If Darren Wilson were black, it would have still been an issue. The Police as a unit were at odds with the entire community.

Police in Ferguson, MO, were abusing power, beating up and extorting residents, writing superfluous tickets solely to fund the courts, etc.

For example:
(bold mine)
http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/fil...report.pdf (page 6)

Please, just peruse that document and tell me honestly that you think it was the color of that cop's skin that was the reason that the people of Ferguson finally said enough.

But if racism is what caused the riots, and they would have happened even if Darren were black, would that mean then that a black cop can be racist against blacks?

Which just doesn't register to me at all. You would think that a black officer of the law would not treat his own like that just because he is now a cop. I mean surely that black officer, before he became a cop, had played basketball in the park just as the above victim did.

[abaris]

I honestly can't understand how someone cannot grasp that "black lives matter" is not a racist slogan, but people whining about it being racist is entirely indicative of why we can't solve our racial problems in the U.S.

I've looked at all the videos and news features about unarmed blacks being shot. I've seen the vids of police assaulting a pool party of black kids as if it was a high class drug raid, just because some white neighbour complained about the noise. It's anecdotal evidence of course, but blacks are treated differently because of the media culture.

It's the same in my country, on a lower scale, since we don't have that many blacks. But police beating up a black person is a far more frequent indicent than doing it to a white person. In fact, when Obama was elected president, one of our more reputable magazines published a cartoon about him visiting Vienna. Sadly I can't find it online, but it showed him admiring the views of many capitals until it finally got to Vienna. And then you only got to see a squad of policemen, batons drawn, swarming and beating someone lying on the ground. It pointed straight at the problem. The tabloids are painting people of color as drig offenders and possible suspects. That's creating a public opinion and from what I get from US news coverage it's not that different there.

Edit - found it.

[Faith No More]

Which just doesn't register to me at all.  You would think thata black officer of the law would not treat his own like that just because he is now a cop.  I mean surely that black officer, before he became a cop, had played basketball in the  park just as the above victim did.

You have to understand that people's behavior is greatly affected by institutions like the police force. When a person is put into an environment where it is acceptable to do things that would normally contradict their ethics, it's easy for that person's moral values to get warped and distorted. When you add on top of that the environment is created around a position of power, you have a recipe for human behavior that boggles the mind, like a black man being a racist cop against black people.

[abaris]

And, that's a short film about one of the more high profile cases of racist police brutality in my country. My nephew made it, based on the protocols of the incident and witness testimonies. In this case, the police officers got fired. But not much more happened to them. The film is in German, but, actually, you don't need to understand what is said to get the message.