Black Lives Matter

The Police Must Be Better

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From my friend Liz on Facebook (permission was granted to copy and paste, but the original post is friends-locked and not linkable):

To the people who ask why do we want to hate cops: WE DON’T.

I grew up on Mister Rogers. I grew up white and middle class. I grew up being taught that the police were the people in my neighborhood. That they were there to protect me. That if I was ever in trouble, find a police officer. Learning that they had become the villains was devastating. I resisted hard at first, but the evidence became overwhelming. It’s like Steve Rogers being revealed as Hydra, but in real life. Even more devastating was when I discovered that black people had known all along. When I learned the horrific conversations that all black people have to have with thier children. It broke my heart, and I can’t even imagine what it’s like for them. We don’t want to hate them, all we want is for them to stop being villains, we want them to become the heroes they were supposed to be, that white people are taught they are. But when we ask them to, they beat us and gas us and mace us, and tell everyone we started it. It’s like some heavy handed dystopian sci-fi story, except it’s REAL and we’re LIVING IN IT. I am constantly fighting back the tears while people ask why we are so full of hate. We are not. We are sad, and tired, and angry, and hurt.

Further thoughts from me:

I’m not an ACAB hardliner, but saying “not all cops are bad” is like any other “not all [group]!” response: Saying that does nothing but ignore the issue at hand.

I’m perfectly aware that there are “good cops” out there. But I’m also aware that our policing structure and culture, both nationwide and in local jurisdictions, is set up to the disadvantage of the public, especially any sort of minority or disadvantaged group. That even if the “good cops” outnumber the “bad cops”, too many of them either do not or cannot reign in the influence of the “bad cops”, and there are any number of reasons why that might be the case.

And so we are where we are now. Where the police are supposed to protect us, but we view them with distrust and suspicion, because we never know when we’ll suddenly be a target to be taken down instead of a citizen to be protected, or when they’ll stand up after taking a knee in performative solidarity just to deploy batons, flash bangs, and tear gas — and that’s me speaking as a middle-class white male, who can only imagine what it must like to grow up as a POC, knowing that you’re seen as a threat first and foremost.

Police can be better than they are — but it’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s certainly not going to happen without a fair mount of upheaval in the process.

All the progress that has been made has happened not in spite of the protests, but because of the protests. And for that very reason, the protests will continue as long as the police as a whole act the way they do.

Privileged

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I have privilege as a White person because I can do all of these things without thinking twice about it…

  • I can go jogging (#AmaudArbery).
  • I can relax in the comfort of my own home (#BothemJean and #AtatianaJefferson).
  • I can ask for help after being in a car crash (#JonathanFerrell and #RenishaMcBride).
  • I can have a cellphone (#StephonClark).
  • I can leave a party to get to safety (#JordanEdwards).
  • I can play loud music (#JordanDavis).
  • I can sell CD’s (#AltonSterling).
  • I can sleep (#AiyanaJones).
  • I can walk from the corner store (#MikeBrown).
  • I can play cops and robbers (#TamirRice).
  • I can go to church (#Charleston9).
  • I can walk home with Skittles (#TrayvonMartin).
  • I can hold a hair brush while leaving my own bachelor party (#SeanBell).
  • I can party on New Years (#OscarGrant).
  • I can get a traffic ticket (#SandraBland).
  • I can lawfully carry a weapon (#PhilandoCastile).
  • I can break down on a public road with car problems (#CoreyJones).
  • I can shop at Walmart (#JohnCrawford).
  • I can have a disabled vehicle (#TerrenceCrutcher).
  • I can read a book in my own car (#KeithScott).
  • I can be a 10yr old walking with our grandfather (#CliffordGlover).
  • I can decorate for a party (#ClaudeReese).
  • I can ask a cop a question (#RandyEvans).
  • I can cash a check in peace (#YvonneSmallwood).
  • I can take out my wallet (#AmadouDiallo).
  • I can run (#WalterScott).
  • I can breathe (#EricGarner).
  • I can live (#FreddieGray).
  • I can ask someone to put a leash on their dog when it is required in the public park we are in (#ChristianCooper).
  • I CAN BE ARRESTED WITHOUT THE FEAR OF BEING MURDERED (#GeorgeFloyd).

White privilege is real. Recognize yours. Take time to consider a Black person’s experience today and every day. Find out what you can do to help. This is a start.

#BlackLivesMatter

Copied from a Facebook post making the rounds.

‘Black Lives Matter’ vs. ‘All Lives Matter’

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Imagine that you’re sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don’t get any. So you say “I should get my fair share.” And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, “everyone should get their fair share.” Now, that’s a wonderful sentiment — indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share also. However, dad’s smart-ass comment just dismissed you and didn’t solve the problem that you still haven’t gotten any!

The problem is that the statement “I should get my fair share” had an implicit “too” at the end: “I should get my fair share, too, just like everyone else.” But your dad’s response treated your statement as though you meant “only I should get my fair share”, which clearly was not your intention. As a result, his statement that “everyone should get their fair share,” while true, only served to ignore the problem you were trying to point out.

That’s the situation of the “black lives matter” movement. Culture, laws, the arts, religion, and everyone else repeatedly suggest that all lives should matter. Clearly, that message already abounds in our society.

The problem is that, in practice, the world doesn’t work the way. You see the film Nightcrawler? You know the part where Renee Russo tells Jake Gyllenhal that she doesn’t want footage of a black or latino person dying, she wants news stories about affluent white people being killed? That’s not made up out of whole cloth — there is a news bias toward stories that the majority of the audience (who are white) can identify with. So when a young black man gets killed (prior to the recent police shootings), it’s generally not considered “news”, while a middle-aged white woman being killed is treated as news. And to a large degree, that is accurate — young black men are killed in significantly disproportionate numbers, which is why we don’t treat it as anything new. But the result is that, societally, we don’t pay as much attention to certain people’s deaths as we do to others. So, currently, we don’t treat all lives as though they matter equally.

Just like asking dad for your fair share, the phrase “black lives matter” also has an implicit “too” at the end: it’s saying that black lives should also matter. But responding to this by saying “all lives matter” is willfully going back to ignoring the problem. It’s a way of dismissing the statement by falsely suggesting that it means “only black lives matter,” when that is obviously not the case. And so saying “all lives matter” as a direct response to “black lives matter” is essentially saying that we should just go back to ignoring the problem.

TL;DR: The phrase “Black lives matter” carries an implicit “too” at the end; it’s saying that black lives should also matter. Saying “all lives matter” is dismissing the very problems that the phrase is trying to draw attention to.

— GeekAesthete