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What unique problem do you think the Trayvon Martin case proves black people face? I'm a middle aged white male and I've been confronted by neighborhood watch
by leereeves 8y ago
What unique problem do you think the Trayvon Martin case proves black people face?
I'm a middle aged white male and I've been confronted by neighborhood watch and by the police while walking in other neighborhoods.
If I had attacked someone who confronted me, as Zimmerman claims Trayvon Martin did, it could easily have ended with a gunshot.
I agree that a big part of #blacklivesmatter is claiming that black folks face unique problems, but in order to make that claim they ignore the cases in which white people have the same experiences.
As a white person from an impoverished family who grew up in a mixed race inner city neighborhood, I see a lot of wealthy white people who claim my life experiences don't happen to white people. I see Hollywood and the news media making the same claims. I see BLM making the same claims.
That's a distorted perspective of life in America that ignores the existence and life experiences of a lot of people.
No, it's doing worse than ignoring them. It's actively trying to silence them.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoYou might find this interesting reading: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow
- leereeves 8y agoDo you think I'm not aware of the claims? They're perfectly valid, until they claim that no white people have similar experiences. A lot of privileged people really seem to imagine that all white people are as privileged as they are. And when sociologists lump the population of Beverly Hills and Silicon Valley together with white people born in the ghetto, the resulting statistics mask the experiences of white people who aren't as fortunate. Specifically in response to that link, I believe the overpolicing of America is a serious problem, and the war on drugs is a war on poor Americans. I know it because I've seen it. I know too many people who've gone to jail or prison for drug crimes. But I won't call it "The New Jim Crow" because I've seen it affect too many white people as well.
- tptacek 8y agoNobody is claiming that "no white people have similar experiences". That's a claim you invented so that you could whale on it on this thread. All BLM says is that African Americans face distinct problems as a group, and, obviously, they do.
- leereeves 8y agoWe can quibble about the language, but the experiences of poor white people are largely dismissed. The hundreds of white Americans shot by police each year are ignored by BLM, by the media, and by the Democratic party. And when white people dare say something like "All Lives Matter", they're silenced as "racist".
- pcwalton 8y ago"All Lives Matter" is obviously racist. The phrase serves no other purpose than to delegitimize the specific concerns of BLM.
- leereeves 8y agoMy whole point here is that the problems faced by black people aren't "distinct". White people experience the same problems, even if the white people you know have been fortunate enough not to. More white people than black people are killed by police. More white people are jailed for drug crimes. The per capita rates are lower among "all white people" but the problems aren't evenly distributed; for certain subsets of white people the per capita rates are equally high. The lives of those white people matter as much as the lives of the people BLM cares about.
- dylanhassinger 8y ago> More white people than black people are killed by police. > More white people are jailed for drug crimes. u sure about that