Black Lives Matter Coalition Makes Demands as Campaign Heats Up.

[JJ Husker]

BLM is a lot less fringe than Westboro, respectively. By a landslide, really.

 

 

JJ, I don't claim to know the ins and outs of what they as an official organization stand for, are working towards, and why. Obviously, I'm not a part of that. All I can really speak towards, and still only barely, cautiously, and with deference to my black friends, is the general struggles and fight that they all go through, usually represented pretty well by #BLM as a grassroots idea moreso than specifically by the organization leaders.

 

That's fair enough. I would just ask that people are careful not to fall into thinking the idea of black lives mattering or the very real struggles they face are necessarily being represented well by the BLM group. It's pretty easy to look at what BLM does and wants and decide for yourself what they really stand for. I would encourage people to do that and to consider much more than simply what the name implies before they offer blind support to that specific group.

[ZRod]

 

 

 

huskerfan2000, let's take this one step at a time, shall we? Since you completely and disappointingly can't seem to grasp the big picture when anyone types out more than 2-3 lines.

 

 

Let's start here. Who was responsible for the eradication and genocide of Native Americans as America was founded and moved westward?

 

lol, your selective understanding of the history of Indians and American in general is not that surprising in the least.

 

You do realize Indians attack each other, and eradicated the less powerful tribes, right? I guess not, it was all those evil white people!

The Crow and the Sioux hated each other so much that they refused to team up to stop the white man about to eradicate their entire lifestyle. The u.s military actively exploited these kind of tribal rivalries.

But the white man was responsible for the genocide of the native American population.

Why do you keep assuming a less savory victim excuses any action of the perpetrator?

I am not excusing anything, I am saying the white man was not the evil people history is trying to make them out to be (there is still some truth on how things played out still available, instead of this new concocted history of the evil white man wiping out all the Indians).

 

I am also saying that the depiction of the Indians today couldn't be farther from the truth. They attack each other and wiped out other tribes without any help from the white man.

So...where does the Indian removal act and the trail of tears fall into your last paragraph? Or, wounded knee? Even little big horn? The boarding schools? And those blankets? Let's even look at Australia and their relationship with the aboriginal people there...

 

No doubt Natives are romanticized like anything else, but they still didn't have nearly the same impact on each other as colonialism.

[Landlord]

Next question for 2000

 

 

 

When specifically did blacks catch up to whites after the white population of our country had a several hundred year advantage in things such as owning property, growing up with parents, and inheriting wealth? When was the moment that all of those things no longer effected black culture?

[Guy Chamberlin]

 

 

 

huskerfan2000, let's take this one step at a time, shall we? Since you completely and disappointingly can't seem to grasp the big picture when anyone types out more than 2-3 lines.

 

 

Let's start here. Who was responsible for the eradication and genocide of Native Americans as America was founded and moved westward?

lol, your selective understanding of the history of Indians and American in general is not that surprising in the least.

 

You do realize Indians attack each other, and eradicated the less powerful tribes, right? I guess not, it was all those evil white people!

The Crow and the Sioux hated each other so much that they refused to team up to stop the white man about to eradicate their entire lifestyle. The u.s military actively exploited these kind of tribal rivalries.

 

But the white man was responsible for the genocide of the native American population.

 

Why do you keep assuming a less savory victim excuses any action of the perpetrator?

 

 

I am not excusing anything, I am saying the white man was not the evil people history is trying to make them out to be (there is still some truth on how things played out still available, instead of this new concocted history of the evil white man wiping out all the Indians).

 

I am also saying that the depiction of the Indians today couldn't be farther from the truth. They attack each other and wiped out other tribes without any help from the white man.

 

 

Dude, my last two posts were written specifically to acknowledge your semi-correctness on these two points.

 

While respectfully suggesting you can't use them to dismiss the systemic de-humanization used against Native Americans and Blacks in this country to take their land and profit from their labor, and issues that clearly aren't solved just because you wish they would go away.

 

If you're a law-abiding black man, who has worked hard, lifted himself and his family up to middle-class respectability, you will still get pulled over in your car for no reason. Unlike the white guys in your office, you will have spent time face down on the pavement because a police officer ordered you to. Worse things will have happened to your friends and family. There's no secret why you didn't get the small business loan a neighbor did. There's no breathless coverage on Nancy Grace when a little black girl gets kidnapped. You can't tell your kids they have nothing to fear because it simply isn't true.

 

When white people don't believe this sh#t happens every single day, it gets a little frustrating I'm sure.

[zoogs]

I'll try to stay away from a snide, smarmy comment, but christ this thread depresses me.

 

Look no further than the open hostility that movements for black (and other minority) issues have always tended to inspire, for an example of their necessity. It's somewhat more under the radar and codified in subtler terms (think "inner cities"), but institutional racism isn't some vestigial trace these days. Segregation lives on, perhaps even making a comeback -- as tends to happen when the victories of the past are taken for granted and forgotten:

 

 

Some conservative writers have very good recognition of the issue. Consider that quote, "All sorts of negative externalities can be expected of someone who rightly feels he’s living under an occupying army." It's not wrong. It's also not something that I can completely understand, no matter how much I *try* to. Empathy goes a long way, but the fact is that my experiences have been colored very differently.

 

Democratic VP candidate Tim Kaine spent the early part of his career defending people denied apartment rentals for their skin color, something that both continues to this day and is the kind of thing Trump has been accused of doing. Look at the voting rights thread; states with GOP-dominated legislatures have made sport of Voter ID laws, a bald-faced effort at entrenchment via suppression of minority votes. To say nothing of gerrymandering, or the racially tinged 'War on Drugs' -- other discriminatory efforts at disenfranchisement.

 

None of this is of course, a full endorsement of every position every BLM-affiliated group will take. But at least lean towards understanding, not towards skepticism and discrediting. There are reasons that many black people feel this way, and it's not because they're lazy and want free stuff -- one of the many galling insinuations prevalent not only in this thread, but in American society and politics writ large.

 

On a few specific topics:

- Here is coverage from The Atlantic on the released platform discussed in the OP. A fair summary, I think, and worth reading especially as much of the conclusions happily offered in this thread have evidently been made with very little reading of the actual platform, or even the Times article, both of which were linked in the OP to begin with.

 

- Not all of #BLM agrees on body cameras, but Jacobin offers a detailed argument against. I don't know where I fall on this; to be honest, it's never been a relevant issue in my life, and I've read and considered relatively little evidence and debate on the topic. I remember the NYT also had a great video highlighting the pitfalls of judgment (in either direction) even in the case of available video, but I don't have that link handy.

 

- Smarter and more serious people than me have come around to be in favor of reparations. Again, this has never been one of my relevant issues, and I've read little on it. It's an interesting topic, a touchy topic, and I don't know where I fall on it exactly.

 

Little more than a generation ago black people were overcoming some truly basic civil rights issues -- almost two hundred years into the founding of this nation on a bedrock of equality and liberty for "all". The sheer weight of all that unfortunate history, and the cultural attitudes that have always and will continue to enable it at whatever scale is possible, are going to be felt for a long time yet. Trivializing its existence today will only continue to add years and decades to its impact on generations of all Americans to come.

 

/rant.

[Guy Chamberlin]

 

Some black guy must have stolen huskerfan2000's girl or something. Some real denial there about what's really going on in our country.

 

What is really going on in this country? I see a country (government) that can not, and will not, let racism die. They continually stoke the flames, to ensure racial tension is alive and well.

 

but please, tell me what is really going on!

 

 

I feel like people are honesty trying to tell you what's going on.

 

If you see racism as a problem that was largely solved — but is now being propped up and stoked by the government — I just don't see a path to understanding.

[Moiraine]

There isn't much that pisses me off more than people who deny racism exists, or if they don't deny it altogether, they deny that it's a problem that's important enough to try to solve or even to talk about.

[Lil' Red]

- Not all of #BLM agrees on body cameras, but Jacobin offers a detailed argument against. I don't know where I fall on this; to be honest, it's never been a relevant issue in my life, and I've read and considered relatively little evidence and debate on the topic. I remember the NYT also had a great video highlighting the pitfalls of judgment (in either direction) even in the case of available video, but I don't have that link handy.

 

I'm very pro-privacy but that article did little to dissuade me on the issue of body cameras. I think the fact that body cameras protect both the officer and the suspect makes the tradeoff of security for privacy worth it. Studies such as this one have shown that body cameras reduce the use of force by police and the amount of civilian complaints.

[Landlord]

There isn't much that pisses me off more than people who deny racism exists, or if they don't deny it altogether, they deny that it's a problem that's important enough to try to solve or even to talk about.

 

 

It's weird how so many people who I've heard claim, "I'm not saying racism doesn't still exist" only ever do two things - spend all their time dismissing examples of racism or racial inequality, or explaining how they aren't a racist or aren't saying that racism doesn't exist.

[zoogs]

 

- Not all of #BLM agrees on body cameras, but Jacobin offers a detailed argument against. I don't know where I fall on this; to be honest, it's never been a relevant issue in my life, and I've read and considered relatively little evidence and debate on the topic. I remember the NYT also had a great video highlighting the pitfalls of judgment (in either direction) even in the case of available video, but I don't have that link handy.

 

I'm very pro-privacy but that article did little to dissuade me on the issue of body cameras. I think the fact that body cameras protect both the officer and the suspect makes the tradeoff of security for privacy worth it. Studies such as this one have shown that body cameras reduce the use of force by police and the amount of civilian complaints.

 

 

Yeah, I don't know how much I agree with that one, or how fervently pro-privacy I am. I can see the point that ultimately they are instruments pointed by police at civilians, so discretion in their usage lies with one party. Generally I'm at least sympathetic to arguments skeptical of surveillance. I don't know. Mostly it's a newish topic to me, and I haven't covered the body of evidence and the 'pro' side of the argument in great detail either.

[knapplc]

Basically this - if you are a White person living in a predominantly White neighborhood with nearly all White friends, and you're getting your racial understanding of America from the internet, it's this: You probably are not racist, but you're getting a terribly skewed perspective of race relations in America, and you should probably not regurgitate what you're learning. Just stop, and don't post it here, or anywhere.

 

Ignore Fox, or any known conservative information source, including blogs, "news" sites or radio. Especially radio.

 

Know that, inherently, you are likely not the problem. And nobody's blaming you because you are not an institution. So don't feel like anyone's saying you're the bad guy.

 

Genuinely be a friend to a Black person. Anyone. It may be hard in your community, but if you meet someone, just be yourself and relax and be open. Talk. Hang out and have a beer. Be as generic as you can be. Start a dialogue, and when you get comfortable talking about the Huskers or the Packers or the Cubs or the weather or whatever, let the conversation about your life and their life just happen. Listen. At some point, when you don't expect it, on a Tuesday, they'll tell you about the traffic stop, or the time they were shopping at the grocery store, or the job interview, or whatever it was. They have an experience. If you're open, you'll hear it, and some part of you will understand where the person they're talking about is coming from. But another part of you will be, maybe just a little bit, shocked. Because what if that happened to you, or your son, or your dad. And you'll understand, when you love that person, just a little bit about what BLM is thinking. It isn't rational, and some of their demands are outright stupid.

 

But how rational would you be if your son was being treated this way? Or your wife, or your mom, or your dad or uncle or sister.

 

The best thing we can do is to ignore the pundits and concentrate on empathy. Because these people - your fellow Americans - are being aggrieved.

[zoogs]

Well said.

[huskerfan2000]

 

 

Some black guy must have stolen huskerfan2000's girl or something. Some real denial there about what's really going on in our country.

 

What is really going on in this country? I see a country (government) that can not, and will not, let racism die. They continually stoke the flames, to ensure racial tension is alive and well.

 

but please, tell me what is really going on!

 

 

I feel like people are honesty trying to tell you what's going on.

 

If you see racism as a problem that was largely solved — but is now being propped up and stoked by the government — I just don't see a path to understanding.

 

 

First off I didn't say anything about racism in this country, I said the government (and the liberal media) are making sure racial tensions do not subside.

[Moiraine]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some black guy must have stolen huskerfan2000's girl or something. Some real denial there about what's really going on in our country.

What is really going on in this country? I see a country (government) that can not, and will not, let racism die. They continually stoke the flames, to ensure racial tension is alive and well.

 

but please, tell me what is really going on!

I feel like people are honesty trying to tell you what's going on.

 

If you see racism as a problem that was largely solved but is now being propped up and stoked by the government I just don't see a path to understanding.

First off I didn't say anything about racism in this country, I said the government (and the liberal media) are making sure racial tensions do not subside.

And that's a bunch of horse poop. They're bringing to light the fact that there are still huge issues facing minorities. Whether you want to believe or not there is institutional racism and something needs to be done about it. It wasn't/isn't subsiding, especially not by ignoring it.

 

It seems like some people think since segregation isn't enforced and we've had a Black president that Blacks should be happy and not complain about anything.

[Guy Chamberlin]

 

 

 

Some black guy must have stolen huskerfan2000's girl or something. Some real denial there about what's really going on in our country.

 

What is really going on in this country? I see a country (government) that can not, and will not, let racism die. They continually stoke the flames, to ensure racial tension is alive and well.

 

but please, tell me what is really going on!

 

 

I feel like people are honesty trying to tell you what's going on.

 

If you see racism as a problem that was largely solved — but is now being propped up and stoked by the government — I just don't see a path to understanding.

 

 

First off I didn't say anything about racism in this country, I said the government (and the liberal media) are making sure racial tensions do not subside.

 

 

Your second sentence is in direct contradiction to your first.

 

Also, the government has not created this new wave of racial tensions, nor have they stoked it.

 

That credit goes to cell phone cameras, and people who aren't afraid to use them.