Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Swartz
I don't often wade in here, and maybe I'm making a mistake to do it now. But I'm going to do it anyway, because that's more and more how I roll lately(i.e, let the chips fall where they choose to, so be it, etc).
This is one of the more reasonable points I've read you make in a while. I think there's room though, to generally agree with Dr. King while at the same time not endorsing every way he went about things. We shouldn't make untouchable heroes out of virtually anyone. My issue here is that I'm basically against anything that increases polarization and antimosity towards the Other, whoever that happens to be at the moment. 'Your community' is something we need to excise. The community is globalized now. Your community should be humanity. If it's smaller that, you are marginalizing everyone you didn't include, which is the exactly the thing that we're fighting against here. This is why, for example, I no longer describe myself as a patriot. I don't want to be that close-minded and biased against people outside of their United States. My life, the lives of my family etc. are no more important than theirs and I think it's highly arrogant for me to act otherwhise.
If they called it Citizen Rights Awareness, or Police Excesses Awareness, or something like that, I would agree with you. They don't. As has been pointed out, BLM has not been completely silent on other forms of violence - but they spend a lot more time and energy traveling around to whatever the current 'hotspot crisis' resulting in a tiny fraction of the deaths that the other things do on which they spend far less time. Their priorities are clear. And when they get there, they say divisive and completely unhelpful(racist is not too strong a word) things like 'Watch. Whiteness. Work" in response to standard police procedures. They can say all they want that black lives don't matter more to them and that they care about all people. Their words and actions and where they choose to focus their activism say otherwhise. At best, they have very poor judgment. I hope that's the case, because the alternative is rather worse.
As for me, I'm far more concerned with what is frankly the real issue; social breakdown. I.e., three times as many blacks are born into families without a father as whites(by contrast, the number of people shot by police? More whites than blacks on the whole, though blacks at a somewhat higher rate but not one disproportionate to the higher crime rates in those communities). Family breakdown has all sorts of negative things associated with it(drug use, poverty, crime, incarceration, education, you name it). It's conspiracy-theory level territory when you consider the amount of time and energy being devoted to issues of such relatively minor impact like police shootings, compared to those devastating whole swaths of the nation. There are many possibilities as to why this focus occurs, but none of them are good or heartwarming.
To me, it's self-evident that for our nation to heal, we must tackle the biggest problems.
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I can agree that there have been actions that have been counterproductive to getting everyone on the same page. I feel the main organization is moving towards the overall goal of equality for AAs in all areas, but some of those that are part of the organization are more militant than others. Also, any violent action made by any AA is automatically attributed to BLM whether that's correct or not. And it's often not corrected with the same enthusiasm as the initial report.
And I agree, the social breakdown plays a very large role in this. While things are better in that regard, historically, AA households are often headed by women with the father not in the picture at all. BLM also is working for improvements in AA families and communities as part of their goals. There are other groups focused on that as well.
For me, all of the issues are tied together. I don't know what the best solution is. I wish I did and could get it implemented. My wife and I work hard at proving a good environment for my kids so that they can go on to be a productive part of society and raise their families to do the same. At the same time, we let them know that there are people out there that are not out for their best interest simply due to their skin color and to be careful. It's an unfortunate part of life.
I hope that our generation is able to get us to a point where that's not as big of a problem. We still have a ways to go. Maybe we're on the way, but the past month or so shows we have a long way to go.