The response to "All Lives Matter"

Of course they do.  But This:

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...... 

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. - by GeekAesthete

       

Stop it now

We do not live in a world of absolutes.  We live in a world of shades and nuance.  The mediatainment industry does not thrive on nuance, but on soundbites and outrage.

It is possible to deplore the actions of a few police who disproportionately use violence against black men, while recognizing that the majority of police work bravely to serve the public.

It is possible to deplore the violence against officers by an angry black man, while recognizing that he is in no way representative  of nor supported by people who are concerned about police violence.

I am deeply concerned at the divisions I see between those who are angry at the death of Philando Castile, shot during a traffic stop, and those who see themselves as police supporters, who feel that the shocking attack on police is a consequence of media and liberal outrage.

It is possible to see both these events as deeply wrong and deplorable, and to mourn all victims.

 Frankly it behooves both sides to recognize that there are no absolutes. It would help if the police supporters would admit that sometimes cops do the wrong thing. Take Tamir Rice, for example (the boy shot in Cleveland with a toy gun):  the police officers arrived and immediately started shooting. In contrast, in another Cleveland Park earlier this year, two boys playing with toy guns were safely apprehended by an experienced officer who did not screech up with his gun out.

 Similarly, it would be helpful if those concerned about police violence consider the snap reactions an officer must make.  For example, Michael Brown (in Ferguson) was not shot in the back, and evidence supports a close struggle with the officer for a weapon.  The officer's subsequent pursuit of Brown may have been a wrong judgment, but the physical evidence supports his story.  No favors are done by pretending otherwise.

We all have work to do on racism and knee-jerk reactions, on community building and common goals.

There are plenty of forces who right now thrive on division, on us-v-them, on race wars, or police wars, or violence.

 We must not let them win.

"I can't breathe" and guns

In 2014, New York police were videotaped holding down a black man who was being arrested for selling CDs illegally on the sidewalk.  They had him pinned.  A passerby filmed it with a cell phone.  Eric Garner (the black man) groaned "I can't breathe!" as a police officer held him pinned in an illegal choke hold.

Garner died.  The coroner determined that holding him and choking him to death was a homicide.  Despite this, despite the video, the policeman responsible was not indicted.

Earlier this week,   Alton Sterling was selling CDs in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  The police arrived to arrest him (why, is not yet clear).  They claimed he was threatening people with a gun, and they used a taser.  He was on the ground, pinned down.  They shot him.  He is dead.  But he had a gun in his pocket, which the police say is the reason he was shot. There is video of this, which disproves some of the police claims.

Last night, a police officer in a suburb of St Paul, MN pulled over the car driven by Philando Castile    for a broken tail light.  Castile  told them, appropriately, that  he was a licensed owner of a gun.  The police officer  told him to put his hands up, but shot him in the arm 4 times as he did so.  He died.  This was recorded on video by Castile's girlfriend, who asked why the police shot a man who was just getting his license? She was pulled out of the car, handcuffed, and put in  the back of a police car with her 4 year old daughter.

Remember John Crawford, who was shot by police in a Walmart for carrying a BB gun he wanted to buy?  (And then the police tried to badger his girlfriend into saying he was a threat.)  Remember when   Tamir Rice, a child of 12, was  playing in a Cleveland park with a toy gun (as boys do), and was shot literally within seconds of the police arriving?   These killings were also videotaped.   The police were not charged.

Except for Garner, all these deaths involve black men (or a boy) with a gun.  These leads one to conclude that an African American exerting his second amendment rights is quite literally taking his life in his hands.

Indeed, I am not the first to suggest that if you want gun control, encourage African Americans to buy guns.  But you'd better buy them body armor too.   Because the response of the police to a black man with a gun appears to be "shoot first".

This is a living nightmare.

 #Blacklivesmatter