4 ms·

Of course everyone believes that all lives matter. But the context is important. If someone says "black lives matter" and your response is "ALL lives matter", y

by wfo 11y ago

Of course everyone believes that all lives matter. But the context is important. If someone says "black lives matter" and your response is "ALL lives matter", you're not just saying you think all lives matter, you're saying you don't think it's a racial issue. And willfully ignoring the problem of racism is what has allowed racism to flourish in, say, police departments. So when you say "all lives matter" you're essentially saying "This problem that effects specifically black people doesn't matter. Let's focus on the more general and still important but less urgent problem that effects white people too, and maybe the problems facing black people will go away". It's like if someone comes to you with statistics about how horribly out of proportion police brutality is towards African Americans and your response is an anecdote about this one time the cops beat up a white guy. Or if someone brings up how serious sexual assault and harassment is for women and all you talk about is how men can be sexually harassed too. If you willfully refuse to recognize the problem, you're part of it.

puredemo 11y ago
>you're saying you don't think it's a racial issue. Correct, it isn't a racial issue. Take the two most well-known cases for instance, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Trayvon Martin assaulted Zimmerman unilaterally (Zimmerman never threw a punch,) had him in a ground-and-pound position and was bashing the back of Zimmerman's head onto the sidewalk while Zimmerman repeatedly screamed for help. If any white seventeen-year-old had done the same thing there would be zero outcry about recognizing the need for self-defense on the part of the neighborhood watchman. If a white kid in a hoodie was walking behind houses in the rain and looking into windows, nobody would label it "profiling" when a neighborhood watch leader called the police, since that's obviously questionable behavior. Michael Brown had just committed robbery at a convenience store, then he assaulted a cop who asked him to walk on the sidewalk, then tried to wrestle away the cop's gun. Forensics shows Michael Brown didn't have his "hands up" when he was shot, meaning the witnesses all lied about the situation. Again, if a white teenager had committed strongarmed robbery and proceeded to try to grab a cops gun there would be literally zero sympathy or outcry when he was shot in self-defense by the cop. People would basically just call the dead teenager "trailer-trash," or something equally derogatory and move on. The only factor race plays in any of this is that we would never have even discussed or heard of these absurd cases had the so-called "victims" not been black. If race enters into the narrative at all it's in the form of black privilege / supremacy, in that black communities seem to believe these incredibly violent assaults are fine and don't merit self-defense for some reason, solely due to skin color. More accurately, it's all hyped up and manufactured by the media to stoke division because nothing sells ad space like impassioned controversy.
- CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
  Regarding witnesses and lying. Check out this Ted talk https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_fraser_the_problem_with_eyewitness_testimony https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_fraser_the_problem_with_eyew...

by wfo 11y ago

puredemo 11y ago

>you're saying you don't think it's a racial issue. Correct, it isn't a racial issue. Take the two most well-known cases for instance, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Trayvon Martin assaulted Zimmerman unilaterally (Zimmerman never threw a punch,) had him in a ground-and-pound position and was bashing the back of Zimmerman's head onto the sidewalk while Zimmerman repeatedly screamed for help. If any white seventeen-year-old had done the same thing there would be zero outcry about recognizing the need for self-defense on the part of the neighborhood watchman. If a white kid in a hoodie was walking behind houses in the rain and looking into windows, nobody would label it "profiling" when a neighborhood watch leader called the police, since that's obviously questionable behavior. Michael Brown had just committed robbery at a convenience store, then he assaulted a cop who asked him to walk on the sidewalk, then tried to wrestle away the cop's gun. Forensics shows Michael Brown didn't have his "hands up" when he was shot, meaning the witnesses all lied about the situation. Again, if a white teenager had committed strongarmed robbery and proceeded to try to grab a cops gun there would be literally zero sympathy or outcry when he was shot in self-defense by the cop. People would basically just call the dead teenager "trailer-trash," or something equally derogatory and move on. The only factor race plays in any of this is that we would never have even discussed or heard of these absurd cases had the so-called "victims" not been black. If race enters into the narrative at all it's in the form of black privilege / supremacy, in that black communities seem to believe these incredibly violent assaults are fine and don't merit self-defense for some reason, solely due to skin color. More accurately, it's all hyped up and manufactured by the media to stoke division because nothing sells ad space like impassioned controversy.

CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
Regarding witnesses and lying. Check out this Ted talk https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_fraser_the_problem_with_eyewitness_testimony https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_fraser_the_problem_with_eyew...