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> One of them said, 'We don't cover black murders because those are cheap deaths,' If anyone ever wondered what attitude triggered the slogan "Black Lives Matt

> One of them said, 'We don't cover black murders because those are cheap deaths,' If anyone ever wondered what attitude triggered the slogan "Black Lives Matter"...

AzzieElbab 5y ago
google Chicago shootings and then ask yourself why none of it made national headlines. Here is my first search result https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2021/8/21/22636162/chicago-weekend-roundup-august-20-23-crime-gun-violence-homicide-police https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2021/8/21/22636162/chicag...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dundarious 5y ago
  It’s news in Chicago so the Chicago papers don’t consider it “cheap” just because it’s commonplace. DC had a lot of murders in black neighborhoods too, at least in the past. Shouldn’t the Washington Post, a DC newspaper, cover those in detail? And if the time period of the article doesn’t line up and the murder rate rose later, how are those earlier black victims “cheap deaths” even by that metric? In every circumstance, there appears to be a racist connotation to calling black murders “cheap deaths”.
- hairofadog 5y ago
  I don't understand what point you're making, but I have noticed that "google Chicago shootings" has become something of a racist dog whistle, so if that's not your intent there may be better phrasing with which to make it.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    The point he's making is that despite lip service by the media little has changed.
    - AzzieElbab 5y ago
      not really. A lot has changed, but not in media. To media all lives are cheap
  - eplanit 5y ago
    The point is black lives seem to matter only if taken by a white police officer. The BLM movement is quite silent regarding other black deaths.
    - mikepurvis 5y ago
      Is it? Definitely the most visible thing was the "defund" thing, but certainly in my circles I saw a lot of interest in reparations, housing reform, health care justice, etc, all with an eye toward addressing the generational economic issues that have led to or at least greatly exacerbated community violence.
    - tom_ 5y ago
      There's nothing wrong with holding the police to higher standards than criminals.
    - rfrey 5y ago
      When the law enforcement institutions are a demonstrable enemy of your community, and seen as a threat rather than a resource, lawlessness will naturally result. The intra-community violence is a symptom (a serious symptom, but a symptom nonetheless) of the systemic problem. One sees the same thing in refugee camps, which I think are directly analogous. The only alternative explanation is "these types of people are violent and lawless by nature", which I do not accept.
      - will4274 5y ago
        > The only alternative explanation No it isn't. In addition to seeing law enforcement as a threat, there are other forces that couple explain disparate murder rates - such as the rate of drug use, the rate of single parent households, the level of lead in water. Your comment reads perilously close to "Either you believe <party line> or <be racist>, no alternatives, so I choose <party line>." There are a hundred other explanations.
        FactolSarin 5y ago
        If the level of lead is higher in black communities, that certainly falls under the umbrella of "systemic problems." I also think a lot of this is interrelated. Without any sort of trust in a law enforcement system, of course there's going to be higher drug use. With a large number of black people being incarcerated due to systemic justice problems, of course you're going to have a higher rate of single parent households (and this is something that can propagate through generations). Those things you listed aren't really "other forces" that can explain disparate murder rates. They're all part of the same issue.
  - blueflow 5y ago
    Isn't "dog whistle" in this case just mental gymnastics to insinuate someone did somehow secretly say things even when neither meant to nor literally said it? Excuse my childish question, was that any different from purposefully misunderstanding your parent?
    - hairofadog 5y ago
      At the moment there are two other responses to my comment, and they both interpret the parent comment in completely opposite ways, so I'd offer that as support for my argument that the parent comment wasn't clear. I'm using the term "dog whistle" here to mean a comment that appears to be innocuous, ambiguous, or harmless to anyone who doesn't already understand the reference, but which in fact has meaning or acts as a placeholder for a longer, well-tread narrative to people familiar with a particular subculture. In this case, the two ways it can be interpreted are spelled out pretty concisely by the first two responses here: "The point he's making is that despite lip service by the media little has changed", which I take to mean, "Media still considers the deaths of black people to be cheap and therefore not worth reporting." Then we have, "The point is black lives seem to matter only if taken by a white police officer", which is the dog-whistle version I was talking about. If that's the message someone is taking from the ambiguous phrase "google Chicago shootings", well, I can't think of a better illustration of the term "dog whistle".
      - blueflow 5y ago
        How does the second statement relate to racism?
        KittenInABox 5y ago
        It relates to racism because the topic, in fact, is racism. It flows naturally that when a conversation starts on racism, generally, conversations on the topic are also related to racism. (In the same way that if I asked HN about their favorite keto recipes more than likely all the replies will be about keto broadly) The discussion above is to identify that when someone says "google Chicago shootings" what they actually are trying to do is undermine the position of someone bringing up "Black Lives Matter" in an indirect way. This specific behavior of bringing up another, new subject matter for the purpose of undermining a position, instead of stating one's criticism about the position directly, is known as a dogwhistle.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - AzzieElbab 5y ago
    -- "google Chicago shootings" has become something of a racist dog whistle you just made that up, didnt you?
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      From 2018: "The latest and greatest in deflections and dog whistles: ‘What about Chicago?’" ... Of course, no one whistling “what about Chicago?” has any desire to resolve the problems in Chicago. If this were about Chicago, they’d be talking about the perils of low investment in communities, the shuttering of mental health facilities, school closures, police corruption or ineffective policing. There would be a push to bring back programs that were cut during the Illinois budget crisis. CeaseFire’s violence reduction strategies were working, until the budget freeze of Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) cut $4.7 million in funding in 2015, effectively shutting down the program. Though some funding has been restored recently, the momentum they had built has obviously been lost. “What about Chicago” is a convenient deflection, and nothing more ever seems to come of it.... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/08/13/the-latest-and-greatest-in-deflections-and-dog-whistles-what-about-chicago/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/0...
      - AzzieElbab 5y ago
        Do you think a paywalled article from 2018 is supposed convince me that I am a racist? Or that the guy who called me a racist done so because he read that article? Or that national media is not supposed to be covering mass shootings from yesterday because that would make them racists?
        dredmorbius 5y ago
        Given that the sum total of your own words in the comment I responded to is "you just made that up, didnt you?", that is what I was responding to. If @hairofadog did in fact just make up this claim, I'd be tremendously interested in hearing what access they have to time travel devices to plant a story from over three years ago in a major national paper of record. As a protip, paywalled articles are often available through archives. Experience infonauts have learned to make use of these: https://web.archive.org/web/20180813171901/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/08/13/the-latest-and-greatest-in-deflections-and-dog-whistles-what-about-chicago/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180813171901/https://www.washi... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/08/13/the-latest-and-greatest-in-deflections-and-dog-whistles-what-about-chicago/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/0... Whether or not you're a racist is really up to you, and how you behave regarding and concerning race-related matters. That's not looking so good from where I sit.
silurian 5y ago
FTA > She retired from the Post in 2003. Also, it seems as that quote is from her time there in the 60s judging by the surrounding paragraphs (clearer and more explicit) timelines.
will4274 5y ago
Your comment hides a lot of depth and comes off as a bit flippant to me. BLM was largely triggered by cop-on-black killings. Civilian black-on-black killings (like those referred to in the quote) continue to get fairly little attention, even from the BLM organizations themselves. Indeed, this is a fairly common conservative criticism of BLM - that it's an anti-police movement, not an anti-black murder movement. (This is not to express an opinion on the criticism, merely to state it's existence.)
- vmception 5y ago
  Can you explain that criticism? Why, to them, is that related? I've seen it before, and I've seen talk show pundits that they watch say it, but whatever is clicking in their head is not clicking in mine. I am not exactly understanding the train of thought which is being used to invalidate calls for police accountability. I am not seeing it related at all. I guess a stretch would be "black lives don't matter to them so why are they trying to convince us", or maybe its not a stretch to the people that would think that, but its also hard for me to relate to because I don't really get the segregation mentality, it seems dated
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- FactolSarin 5y ago
  Holding police accountable for unreasonable killings is not being anti-police.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    And if that's all BLM did, far fewer people would have any issue with them. But you're simply ignoring reality if you really think that they limit themselves to unreasonable killings.
    - kbenson 5y ago
      Like any and every popular movement, there will people that attach themselves to it to serve their own agenda, sometimes fully self serving, sometimes because they see a platform to advance something they see as extremely important for society, even if many other people disagree on the fundamentals or just the methodology. While missteps of the BLM movement deserve to be called out and criticized, it's also important to remember that great many people are more interested with the original core tenets of the movement and so it's not accurate to paint them all because of the actions of a few. The same goes for the Democratic and Republican parties. I'm sure everyone here could point to bad actions that people have taken in the name of those groups and/or organizations, but that doesn't mean we should assume those negative instances represent the wishes of all the others in that group, or apply the criticism across the entire group when it doesn't reflect a majority of their views. And before people come back with their perceptions of how much of a group believes in and supports the actions of some, it's worth considering that opposition groups will always latch onto the problem people and subgroups and play them up as larger than they are, so the media will almost always either misrepresent them as a larger or smaller portion of that group than they actually are.

> One of them said, 'We don't cover black murders because those are cheap deaths,' If anyone ever wondered what attitude triggered the slogan "Black Lives Matter"...

AzzieElbab 5y ago

google Chicago shootings and then ask yourself why none of it made national headlines. Here is my first search result https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2021/8/21/22636162/chicago-weekend-roundup-august-20-23-crime-gun-violence-homicide-police https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2021/8/21/22636162/chicag...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dundarious 5y ago
It’s news in Chicago so the Chicago papers don’t consider it “cheap” just because it’s commonplace. DC had a lot of murders in black neighborhoods too, at least in the past. Shouldn’t the Washington Post, a DC newspaper, cover those in detail? And if the time period of the article doesn’t line up and the murder rate rose later, how are those earlier black victims “cheap deaths” even by that metric? In every circumstance, there appears to be a racist connotation to calling black murders “cheap deaths”.
hairofadog 5y ago
I don't understand what point you're making, but I have noticed that "google Chicago shootings" has become something of a racist dog whistle, so if that's not your intent there may be better phrasing with which to make it.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  The point he's making is that despite lip service by the media little has changed.
  - AzzieElbab 5y ago
    not really. A lot has changed, but not in media. To media all lives are cheap
- eplanit 5y ago
  The point is black lives seem to matter only if taken by a white police officer. The BLM movement is quite silent regarding other black deaths.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    Is it? Definitely the most visible thing was the "defund" thing, but certainly in my circles I saw a lot of interest in reparations, housing reform, health care justice, etc, all with an eye toward addressing the generational economic issues that have led to or at least greatly exacerbated community violence.
  - tom_ 5y ago
    There's nothing wrong with holding the police to higher standards than criminals.
  - rfrey 5y ago
    When the law enforcement institutions are a demonstrable enemy of your community, and seen as a threat rather than a resource, lawlessness will naturally result. The intra-community violence is a symptom (a serious symptom, but a symptom nonetheless) of the systemic problem. One sees the same thing in refugee camps, which I think are directly analogous. The only alternative explanation is "these types of people are violent and lawless by nature", which I do not accept.
    - will4274 5y ago
      > The only alternative explanation No it isn't. In addition to seeing law enforcement as a threat, there are other forces that couple explain disparate murder rates - such as the rate of drug use, the rate of single parent households, the level of lead in water. Your comment reads perilously close to "Either you believe <party line> or <be racist>, no alternatives, so I choose <party line>." There are a hundred other explanations.
      - FactolSarin 5y ago
        If the level of lead is higher in black communities, that certainly falls under the umbrella of "systemic problems." I also think a lot of this is interrelated. Without any sort of trust in a law enforcement system, of course there's going to be higher drug use. With a large number of black people being incarcerated due to systemic justice problems, of course you're going to have a higher rate of single parent households (and this is something that can propagate through generations). Those things you listed aren't really "other forces" that can explain disparate murder rates. They're all part of the same issue.
- blueflow 5y ago
  Isn't "dog whistle" in this case just mental gymnastics to insinuate someone did somehow secretly say things even when neither meant to nor literally said it? Excuse my childish question, was that any different from purposefully misunderstanding your parent?
  - hairofadog 5y ago
    At the moment there are two other responses to my comment, and they both interpret the parent comment in completely opposite ways, so I'd offer that as support for my argument that the parent comment wasn't clear. I'm using the term "dog whistle" here to mean a comment that appears to be innocuous, ambiguous, or harmless to anyone who doesn't already understand the reference, but which in fact has meaning or acts as a placeholder for a longer, well-tread narrative to people familiar with a particular subculture. In this case, the two ways it can be interpreted are spelled out pretty concisely by the first two responses here: "The point he's making is that despite lip service by the media little has changed", which I take to mean, "Media still considers the deaths of black people to be cheap and therefore not worth reporting." Then we have, "The point is black lives seem to matter only if taken by a white police officer", which is the dog-whistle version I was talking about. If that's the message someone is taking from the ambiguous phrase "google Chicago shootings", well, I can't think of a better illustration of the term "dog whistle".
    - blueflow 5y ago
      How does the second statement relate to racism?
      - KittenInABox 5y ago
        It relates to racism because the topic, in fact, is racism. It flows naturally that when a conversation starts on racism, generally, conversations on the topic are also related to racism. (In the same way that if I asked HN about their favorite keto recipes more than likely all the replies will be about keto broadly) The discussion above is to identify that when someone says "google Chicago shootings" what they actually are trying to do is undermine the position of someone bringing up "Black Lives Matter" in an indirect way. This specific behavior of bringing up another, new subject matter for the purpose of undermining a position, instead of stating one's criticism about the position directly, is known as a dogwhistle.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- AzzieElbab 5y ago
  -- "google Chicago shootings" has become something of a racist dog whistle you just made that up, didnt you?
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    From 2018: "The latest and greatest in deflections and dog whistles: ‘What about Chicago?’" ... Of course, no one whistling “what about Chicago?” has any desire to resolve the problems in Chicago. If this were about Chicago, they’d be talking about the perils of low investment in communities, the shuttering of mental health facilities, school closures, police corruption or ineffective policing. There would be a push to bring back programs that were cut during the Illinois budget crisis. CeaseFire’s violence reduction strategies were working, until the budget freeze of Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) cut $4.7 million in funding in 2015, effectively shutting down the program. Though some funding has been restored recently, the momentum they had built has obviously been lost. “What about Chicago” is a convenient deflection, and nothing more ever seems to come of it.... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/08/13/the-latest-and-greatest-in-deflections-and-dog-whistles-what-about-chicago/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/0...
    - AzzieElbab 5y ago
      Do you think a paywalled article from 2018 is supposed convince me that I am a racist? Or that the guy who called me a racist done so because he read that article? Or that national media is not supposed to be covering mass shootings from yesterday because that would make them racists?
      - dredmorbius 5y ago
        Given that the sum total of your own words in the comment I responded to is "you just made that up, didnt you?", that is what I was responding to. If @hairofadog did in fact just make up this claim, I'd be tremendously interested in hearing what access they have to time travel devices to plant a story from over three years ago in a major national paper of record. As a protip, paywalled articles are often available through archives. Experience infonauts have learned to make use of these: https://web.archive.org/web/20180813171901/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/08/13/the-latest-and-greatest-in-deflections-and-dog-whistles-what-about-chicago/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180813171901/https://www.washi... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/08/13/the-latest-and-greatest-in-deflections-and-dog-whistles-what-about-chicago/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/0... Whether or not you're a racist is really up to you, and how you behave regarding and concerning race-related matters. That's not looking so good from where I sit.

silurian 5y ago

FTA > She retired from the Post in 2003. Also, it seems as that quote is from her time there in the 60s judging by the surrounding paragraphs (clearer and more explicit) timelines.

will4274 5y ago

Your comment hides a lot of depth and comes off as a bit flippant to me. BLM was largely triggered by cop-on-black killings. Civilian black-on-black killings (like those referred to in the quote) continue to get fairly little attention, even from the BLM organizations themselves. Indeed, this is a fairly common conservative criticism of BLM - that it's an anti-police movement, not an anti-black murder movement. (This is not to express an opinion on the criticism, merely to state it's existence.)

vmception 5y ago
Can you explain that criticism? Why, to them, is that related? I've seen it before, and I've seen talk show pundits that they watch say it, but whatever is clicking in their head is not clicking in mine. I am not exactly understanding the train of thought which is being used to invalidate calls for police accountability. I am not seeing it related at all. I guess a stretch would be "black lives don't matter to them so why are they trying to convince us", or maybe its not a stretch to the people that would think that, but its also hard for me to relate to because I don't really get the segregation mentality, it seems dated
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
FactolSarin 5y ago
Holding police accountable for unreasonable killings is not being anti-police.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  And if that's all BLM did, far fewer people would have any issue with them. But you're simply ignoring reality if you really think that they limit themselves to unreasonable killings.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    Like any and every popular movement, there will people that attach themselves to it to serve their own agenda, sometimes fully self serving, sometimes because they see a platform to advance something they see as extremely important for society, even if many other people disagree on the fundamentals or just the methodology. While missteps of the BLM movement deserve to be called out and criticized, it's also important to remember that great many people are more interested with the original core tenets of the movement and so it's not accurate to paint them all because of the actions of a few. The same goes for the Democratic and Republican parties. I'm sure everyone here could point to bad actions that people have taken in the name of those groups and/or organizations, but that doesn't mean we should assume those negative instances represent the wishes of all the others in that group, or apply the criticism across the entire group when it doesn't reflect a majority of their views. And before people come back with their perceptions of how much of a group believes in and supports the actions of some, it's worth considering that opposition groups will always latch onto the problem people and subgroups and play them up as larger than they are, so the media will almost always either misrepresent them as a larger or smaller portion of that group than they actually are.