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[CJD]

(09-15-2020, 03:05 PM)Mickeypoo Wrote: I get what you are saying about the pledge and not understanding it, etc. I enjoyed your remembrance as a kid.  I was laughing!  :) 

In a way I think a unifying American message meant for ALL Americans such as the Pledge and Anthem being taught from a young age is good.  We want National unity and it's what keeps us together as an American people. What is wrong with indoctrinating our American children to believe we live in a great, united country that includes all Americans of all races?  Think of the unity that would bring. 

I can certainly see your point of indoctrination, but I feel that National unity being instilled from a young age is a good thing.  It's like glue that hold us together.  A core belief that we are all Americans and we are all unified together as one country.  Maybe the problem now is that we stopped "indoctrinating" our youth from a unifying standpoint.

As far as BLM, the fact it is accepted at any level is terrifying.  Having a specific "lives matter" for one race is the opposite of unifying.  Just read their web page and what they are about.

All lives matter, including black lives!  I find it interesting the black community want to blame everyone else for their problems.  Just look at the crime stats.  Black crime is horrific and the Black population is only 13.4% of the population.  Black on black murder and violence is off the charts.  Look at Chicago EVERY weekend.  Killing each other and their children.  It's like a third world country.

What we need are conversations about how we can help the black communities overcome their overwhelming violence, murder and broken home problems.

Why would a cop in a high crime area not be apprehensive when dealing with a black person?  It's not racist, it's crime stats and the reality of ultra high murder and violence in black communities.

If anything I said was offensive to anyone, I truly apologize and it was not my intent in any way.

A lot to unpack here. The first thing I think is important is discerning the difference between the organization of Black Lives Matter and the movement of Black Lives Matter.
The organization is a loosely tied together group of mostly independent and local movements. For example, the leader of Portland's BLM branch may say something that is not emblematic of other branches or the movement as a whole. After all, the vast majority of the protesters are not part of the organization, but come out to support the cause itself, which is to cut down on police brutality, especially that which disproportionately affects black people.

So if their website says something that is controversial, I wouldn't know because I do not support the organization of BLM, per se. I support the concept and cause behind it. This is not to say I disagree with anything the organization or any leader or figure head says or believes, just that those things don't really trickle down to the supporters the way you'd expect from a typical organization. There are no weekly BLM meetings where they discuss goals or talking points with all of their protesters. It's just a movement.

As for the slogan itself, the reason it is important is because all lives do matter, but black lives are not being treated as if they matter as much as other lives. Believe me when I tell you that every supporter of BLM also believes All Lives Matter. We just don't say that because it was a slogan specifically created to be a counter point to black lives matter. No one was saying All Lives Matter before BLM existed, nor were they saying Blue Lives Matter either. It's similar to how "Men's Rights Activists" were largely a response to feminism, rather than their own insulated movement with beliefs and values. It was invented to undermine feminism, much like All Lives Matter was invented to undermine BLM.

The Black crime statistics are a very tricky talking point because while it's true that approximately 50% of murders in America are committed by black people, it is not 50% of all violent crime.

Arrest rates for black people for aggravated assault, for example, is 33.69%, Burglary is 29.46%, Larceny-theft is 30.02%, Motor Vehicle Theft is 32.33%, Arson is 25.03%

Overall, the violent crime rate of black people is 37.80%. It's also important to note that these are just arrest rates. Not conviction rates.

You can find the source for these numbers here:
https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/ucr.asp?table_in=2

They are for 2018.

As far as the black on black crime, all races are more likely to murder/commit crimes against their own race. 80.8% of white people murdered were murdered by other white people, which isn't much different than the 88.9% of black people's murders committed by other black people.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls

But back to the crime rates for black people, It's true that all of those numbers are greater than black people's population share, but this is without taking into account socio-economic status in America.

It's a fact that black people are, on average, less wealthy than white people in this country. So if poverty is related to crime and being black is related to being poor, black people are obviously going to disproportionately represent crime in this country.

If you found a tracking report that normalizes black and white crime rates based on income, I imagine they would be relatively similar (I don't know this for a fact, but the correlation has been noted and studied extensively.) One recent study has found that for white Americans, socioeconomic status is a major determining factor in susceptibility to fatal police violence, while for black Americans, class is critical but not decisive.

And that's not even getting into the statistics regarding policing in this country. Black communities are policed at higher rates than white communities and black people are arrested at higher rates for crimes that, statistically, are done at equivalent rates between white and black people (smoking weed, for example). It stands to reason that, if you are more heavily policing an area,  there will be more people arrested in that area.

And now we're approaching the discussion on why, as you say, black people blame everyone else for their problems.

It's a touchy subject any time you try to bring up systemic issues, but I don't think it's arguable that, in the past, black people have faced significantly higher and larger barriers to success than white people in America. There's the obvious issue of slavery, but that's a relatively long time ago at this point. However, one thing that is not far away is the civil rights movement of the 1960s. And then there is redlining that followed.

Redlining, of course, being the practice of banks refusing to offer loans to black people in certain (often more affluent) areas.

Redlining is now illegal but, you know...if making something illegal stopped it in its tracks then crime wouldn't exist, would it?

And the effects of it are still felt to this day. If black people were redlined into lower income areas, then they are more likely to still be living there (for the same reason that black people are higher percentages in the south. When you grow up somewhere, you're more likely to stay there, for both factors in and out of your control. Which means you're more likely to raise your children there who then also subsequently are more likely to stay there).  Lower income areas have, generally, worse schools because schools are funded by property taxes. If a race of people are statistically more likely to get a worse education, then it stands to reason that they'd also tend to be, on average, less educated and therefore less likely to escape poverty.

Even if we assume that all systemic racism in America has been removed and every person is only judged on their merit and capabilities, black people were still held back for centuries because of it, making it harder for them to accrue generational wealth and therefore more likely to remain in poverty. And generational wealth is one of the biggest contributors to success in future generations (look at Donald Trump). Owning a house that gains value is a big part of that generational wealth.

If you and I were in a race, but you were shackled to a ball and chain right before the race started, even if they released you from that ball and chain halfway through the race, I'd still have a sizable lead on you, wouldn't I? Sure, you may be able to catch me, but only if you go well above and beyond what I did (you were significantly faster than me).

That's the basic scenario we are in right now (if we assume systemic racism, the ball and chain, is 100% gone, which is debatable at best). And all Black Lives Matter protesters are saying is can we please acknowledge that ball and chain and work towards correcting the problems it caused?

I know this is a huge information dump and it'd be difficult for you to reply to each point without this whole conversation getting pretty long and hard to navigate, but I hope some of this helps you understand a little better what black people (and non-black people who agree with the cause) are trying to say when they say Black Lives Matter.