5 ms·

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.
  - rfrey 5y ago
    I wrote poorly: my intended meaning was "the only alternative to a systemic root problem". Lead in water is a good counterpoint because although it's "systemic" as in "the water system", it's not what most people mean by systemic in this context. Drug use and single parenthood, though, are in line with my intended (not what I wrote) meaning, though. One has to ask why there is higher drug use and single parenthood, and it seems to me that the end result of asking why will be "systemic issues" or "nature of the people". Of course, which systemic issues will remain a difficult question, and the answer will probably be a bit of a bunch of things. But overall, my comment was attempting to answer why I think BLM supporter focus on law enforcement violence, and "are silent" on black-on-black violence - it's because the latter is seen as a symptom, the former a cause.
darksaints 5y ago
I've never understood this point. White people are mostly murdered by other white people. Black people are mostly murdered by other black people. This should be obvious...most murderers know their victims, and they know them well enough to have a motive to kill them. When a police officer wrongfully kills a white person, we don't go around telling white people that they shouldn't care about police murders because more white people are killed by other white people than the police. Why does it matter when discussing black people murdered by police? Here's something that you should consider: the police murder problem in the US is massive. If our police had the same rate of killings as German police, we would have about 45 deaths at the hands of the police every year. But we actually have over 1000. And black people are twice as likely to be killed than white people by our murderous police. Why shouldn't we complain about that?
- will4274 5y ago
  Because the black homicide rate is really high. It can be a bit easy to forget this, caught in the abstract. The movement isn't called "the police shouldn't kill people" - it's called "black lives matter". I'd expect a movement named "white lived matter" to focus on all-up issues for white people. > black people are twice as likely to be killed than white people by our murderous police. Among young people (18-45), black people are ten times as likely to die by homocide (27.6% of deaths vs 2.8%). From the [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/men/2017/nonhispanic-white/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/men/2017/nonhispanic-w...). Giving yourself a broad focus "black lives" and then ignoring the number one category of death among young males (homicide) - it's a bit odd. Imagine if you ran across the "Cancer Matters" institute and it turned out they don't study lung, breast, or prostate cancers (the three most common and deadly). Instead they study just one specific subtype. What would you think? Edit: just a small comment, but I'm more trying to "explain the argument" than make it myself. Asking if organizations are "pure enough" to their purposes is a common tactic on all sides, and it's clear that _some_ who ask this don't do so in good faith, trying to set the bar impossibly high. People have wildly different perceptions of BLM, in part because BLM is different organizations in different cities. I don't mean to endorse those impossibly high bars, only to _explain_ that the criticism is that BLM is not meeting the bar to some folks in terms of actions matching the mission/label. I'm trying to answer in good faith - assuming that the question was asked in that same good faith - as a legitimate request for explanation.
triceratops 5y ago
> The BLM movement is quite silent regarding other black deaths There's an expectation that the police will investigate regular crimes and bring the criminals to justice. For crimes committed by police, there's no such guarantee. Why is it wrong for a movement to focus on watching the watchmen? In any case, what are protests and rallies going to do against gang violence? You need social programs to keep kids out of gangs, provide poor families additional assistance, improve living standards and so on.
- eplanit 5y ago
  "You need social programs to keep kids out of gangs" A cohesive home with both the mother and father present, where moral values are taught, is more effective than a sad, government-run program.
  - triceratops 5y ago
    > A cohesive home with both the mother and father present Which can be torn apart by crime, police brutality, over-policing, or criminalization of being poor; get a parking ticket, fail to pay it, go to jail, lose your job, rinse and repeat. (A sign seen at a BLM protest sums it up: "You kill our fathers, then make fun of us for not having one") > where moral values are taught I'd wager that the vast majority of parents and guardians teach their kids not to lie, cheat, steal, or hurt other people. How much those teachings take root depends a great deal on the child's environment and peer group. Don't believe me? Then why do parents pay so much money for a "good" school district? The moral values they impart should hold even if they live in a "bad" neighborhood, right? > sad, government-run program Who said anything about government-run? Churches, community groups and local clubs like the Rotary Club, even police departments (this last one is the government, I'll give you that) run after-school and youth programs to keep kids busy and engaged in productive pursuits. Secondly, if both parents are working long hours, you need someone to keep an eye on the kids after school. Some people have grandparents or other relatives but not everyone is so lucky (the grandparents themselves might be working long hours; generational poverty is a thing). Absent that support, the external factors I mentioned above begin to dominate. Again, I don't understand the hate for a movement that, at its core, claims to want to hold government servants accountable for the crimes they commit. That's generally considered a good thing across political lines.
kaitai 5y ago
The American Cancer Society is quite silent regarding heart attacks. There are plenty of groups working on Black maternal and infant mortality, drug and gang violence in the Black community, etc. If you want to work on that feel free to volunteer/give money. The criticism that "movement A isn't doing anything about topic B" is just sort of silly, as I can always come up with some worthy topic that movement A isn't addressing, no matter which movement.

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.
- rfrey 5y ago
  I wrote poorly: my intended meaning was "the only alternative to a systemic root problem". Lead in water is a good counterpoint because although it's "systemic" as in "the water system", it's not what most people mean by systemic in this context. Drug use and single parenthood, though, are in line with my intended (not what I wrote) meaning, though. One has to ask why there is higher drug use and single parenthood, and it seems to me that the end result of asking why will be "systemic issues" or "nature of the people". Of course, which systemic issues will remain a difficult question, and the answer will probably be a bit of a bunch of things. But overall, my comment was attempting to answer why I think BLM supporter focus on law enforcement violence, and "are silent" on black-on-black violence - it's because the latter is seen as a symptom, the former a cause.

darksaints 5y ago

I've never understood this point. White people are mostly murdered by other white people. Black people are mostly murdered by other black people. This should be obvious...most murderers know their victims, and they know them well enough to have a motive to kill them. When a police officer wrongfully kills a white person, we don't go around telling white people that they shouldn't care about police murders because more white people are killed by other white people than the police. Why does it matter when discussing black people murdered by police? Here's something that you should consider: the police murder problem in the US is massive. If our police had the same rate of killings as German police, we would have about 45 deaths at the hands of the police every year. But we actually have over 1000. And black people are twice as likely to be killed than white people by our murderous police. Why shouldn't we complain about that?

will4274 5y ago
Because the black homicide rate is really high. It can be a bit easy to forget this, caught in the abstract. The movement isn't called "the police shouldn't kill people" - it's called "black lives matter". I'd expect a movement named "white lived matter" to focus on all-up issues for white people. > black people are twice as likely to be killed than white people by our murderous police. Among young people (18-45), black people are ten times as likely to die by homocide (27.6% of deaths vs 2.8%). From the [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/men/2017/nonhispanic-white/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/men/2017/nonhispanic-w...). Giving yourself a broad focus "black lives" and then ignoring the number one category of death among young males (homicide) - it's a bit odd. Imagine if you ran across the "Cancer Matters" institute and it turned out they don't study lung, breast, or prostate cancers (the three most common and deadly). Instead they study just one specific subtype. What would you think? Edit: just a small comment, but I'm more trying to "explain the argument" than make it myself. Asking if organizations are "pure enough" to their purposes is a common tactic on all sides, and it's clear that _some_ who ask this don't do so in good faith, trying to set the bar impossibly high. People have wildly different perceptions of BLM, in part because BLM is different organizations in different cities. I don't mean to endorse those impossibly high bars, only to _explain_ that the criticism is that BLM is not meeting the bar to some folks in terms of actions matching the mission/label. I'm trying to answer in good faith - assuming that the question was asked in that same good faith - as a legitimate request for explanation.

triceratops 5y ago

> The BLM movement is quite silent regarding other black deaths There's an expectation that the police will investigate regular crimes and bring the criminals to justice. For crimes committed by police, there's no such guarantee. Why is it wrong for a movement to focus on watching the watchmen? In any case, what are protests and rallies going to do against gang violence? You need social programs to keep kids out of gangs, provide poor families additional assistance, improve living standards and so on.

eplanit 5y ago
"You need social programs to keep kids out of gangs" A cohesive home with both the mother and father present, where moral values are taught, is more effective than a sad, government-run program.
- triceratops 5y ago
  > A cohesive home with both the mother and father present Which can be torn apart by crime, police brutality, over-policing, or criminalization of being poor; get a parking ticket, fail to pay it, go to jail, lose your job, rinse and repeat. (A sign seen at a BLM protest sums it up: "You kill our fathers, then make fun of us for not having one") > where moral values are taught I'd wager that the vast majority of parents and guardians teach their kids not to lie, cheat, steal, or hurt other people. How much those teachings take root depends a great deal on the child's environment and peer group. Don't believe me? Then why do parents pay so much money for a "good" school district? The moral values they impart should hold even if they live in a "bad" neighborhood, right? > sad, government-run program Who said anything about government-run? Churches, community groups and local clubs like the Rotary Club, even police departments (this last one is the government, I'll give you that) run after-school and youth programs to keep kids busy and engaged in productive pursuits. Secondly, if both parents are working long hours, you need someone to keep an eye on the kids after school. Some people have grandparents or other relatives but not everyone is so lucky (the grandparents themselves might be working long hours; generational poverty is a thing). Absent that support, the external factors I mentioned above begin to dominate. Again, I don't understand the hate for a movement that, at its core, claims to want to hold government servants accountable for the crimes they commit. That's generally considered a good thing across political lines.

kaitai 5y ago

The American Cancer Society is quite silent regarding heart attacks. There are plenty of groups working on Black maternal and infant mortality, drug and gang violence in the Black community, etc. If you want to work on that feel free to volunteer/give money. The criticism that "movement A isn't doing anything about topic B" is just sort of silly, as I can always come up with some worthy topic that movement A isn't addressing, no matter which movement.