-
Anaxagoras
433With recent events going on, I find myself having to explain, discuss, and debate some of my colleagues, on the stance of the Black Lives Matter (or BLM) movement. Apparently, those whom I've engaged in discussion with regarding this movement for some reason despite my continued explanation, continue to believe this movement somehow elevates the concerns of the black community above everyone else. Again, BLM's platform extend beyond black nationalism which in fact this organization like the NAACP has become multi-ethnic.
According to BLM's website:
"Black Lives Matter began as a call to action in response to state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism. Our intention from the very beginning was to connect Black people from all over the world who have a shared desire for justice to act together in their communities. The impetus for that commitment was, and still is, the rampant and deliberate violence inflicted on us by the state."
Some more:
"We are expansive. We are a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement. We also believe that in order to win and bring as many people with us along the way, we must move beyond the narrow nationalism that is all too prevalent in Black communities. We must ensure we are building a movement that brings all of us to the front.
We affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. Our network centers those who have been marginalized within Black liberation movements.
We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.
We affirm our humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.
The call for Black lives to matter is a rallying cry for ALL Black lives striving for liberation.
Source:https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/
Why are some against BLM?
According to a website conversation.com the backlash towards BLM stems from the emergence of White Identity politics which had spurred "All Lives Matter." According to the article:
"All Lives Matter” erases a long past and present of systemic inequality in the US. It represents a refusal to acknowledge that the state does not value all lives in the same way. It reduces the problem of racism to individual prejudice and casts African-Americans as aggressors against a colourblind post-civil rights order in which White people no longer “see race."
Source:https://theconversation.com/the-backlash-against-black-lives-matter-is-just-more-evidence-of-injustice-85587
According to Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s book "Racism Without Racists," under the "White understanding," talking about systemic racism is itself racist, because it conjures into existence “racial divides” that are invisible to Whites who believe themselves to be free of prejudice. But I wonder where the continued misunderstanding concerning BLM really comes from? Is it willful ignorance or an individual attempt to merely not acknowledge the issues of people in the black community? -
180 Proof
15.3k:death: :flower:
I was irked by it the first time I read or heard the phrase (probably after (or maybe just before) the Eric Garner lynching by unindicted NYPD); the activists missed - dropped? - the obvious and necessary qualifier "also" from their anti-racist cri du coeur which should have been, more aptly, BLACK LIVES ALSO MATTER. 'BLM' is ripe for co-option and parody because it's a categorical, or unconditional, assertion. Cat's out of the bag, so to speak, we're now stuck with more of a slogan than a thesis.But I wonder where the continued misunderstanding concerning BLM really comes from? — Anaxagoras
Yes. Because, I suspect, confronting racism & other social injustice "issues" plaguing (mostly) non-white communities, are perceived by whites as personal indictments - not for the well-documented, jurisprudentially enshrined, legacy and manifest status quo of systemic racial discrimination & terrorism - just because they are white.Is it willful ignorance or an individual attempt [by White People] to merely not acknowledge the issues of people in the black community?
Like after "9-11", the oft-repeated question (vis-à-vis jihadi terrorists) that made the rounds with media pundits & talking heads: "Why Do They Hate Us?" Or how the Black Panthers were/are officially designated "a terrorist organization" and yet the KKK still are not. 'White Supremacy' is manifestly tolerated by many (most?) whites because it doesn't threaten them - white people as such - or the caste-priviledges of Whiteness in America (& Europe); it's the defeated (treasonous, pro-slavery) Confederate Flags, Statues, Monuments & Generals' Names everywhere to honor a dishonorable "heritage" and "lost cause" in order to prop-up bloated White Priviledge grown so cripplingly obese from centuries of cannibalizing Black Brown Yellow & Red bodies that Whiteness now can barely stand or trundle or even wipe itself (e.g. MAGA tRumpers, dog-whistle (dixiecrat) Reagan Republicans, boll weevil/blue dog Democrats). The plea "Stop killing us" threatens their ancestral prerogatives to do just that with impunity and without troubling their KKKhristian consciences.
Lastly though (just riffin' here mind you), perhaps more fundamentally, many white people (seem to me/us to) feel threatened merely by discussing "racism" because they do not believe the survivors of white terror and their continually brutalized descendents only want "Social Justice" and "Equality", but, what we're really after instead, I believe whites believe, is revenge. We say "Reparations", they (most?) hear "revenge" (i.e. "Race War").
:mask: -
Welkin Rogue
80
Is it willful ignorance or an individual attempt to merely not acknowledge the issues of people in the black community? — Anaxagoras
I think there's a bunch of stuff going on. We find contrarians in the IDW looking for an opportunity to oppose 'woke dogmas' and get martyred by the inevitable backlash they'll get online. We find conservatives who associate BLM with Marxism and generally oppose any large-scale institutional and cultural reform. Then there's ignorance and self-absorption, which can be explained in terms of a culpable failure to develop a loving gaze (as Murdoch might have put it) as well as a relatively innocent lack of exposure to relevant statistics, history and experience.
Take Eric Weinstein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETcq7qqPhow . He seems well-meaning in some ways, but I find his reaction perplexing. He seems to think that the BLM movement is a superficial symptom of some broader, more universal psycho-social disease, and that this 'chaos' could have erupted at any number of weak points in our flagging system.
Even if it is true that 'the conditions were ripe for some kind of explosion', that doesn't reduce the legitimacy of the concerns being voiced, limit their urgency, or imply that those concerns don't have unique motivations (i.e., imply that there aren't race-specific issues). What does he think should happen? That we campaign for something universal but hopelessly nebulous? Or don't campaign for anything at all, and perhaps simply work on our own individual spiritual condition?
Maybe I'm not being fair to his analysis, I haven't gone into it. I was just recently exposed to his rants and they've been floating around my head. I'm not quite sure what to make of him, to be honest. He doesn't seem disingenous, but if you zoom out, it's hard for me not to see his reaction as insufficiently sensitive to the injustices here. -
Isaac
10.3kWhy are some against BLM? — Anaxagoras
I'm not justifying or defending any of these beliefs, but you asked so...
Most people seem to feel some injustice has been done to them if they've not been judged by some variant of the maxim "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need", by which I mean "I wasn't able to", and "they didn't deserve/need it" are considered justification for inaction against injustices.
Inequalities also mean that most people are also in a permanent state of guilt about those less fortunate than themselves, and resentment of those more fortunate than themselves.
The upshot of these two principles is that people are constantly looking to assuage their guilt (using either "I wasn't able to", or "they didn't deserve/need it") without compromising their feelings of just resentment about those above them.
Scalar issues cause little opposition because they fit well into this mode. The fight against poverty, for example. There's always someone poorer than you, but there's always someone less poor who should be doing more. One can acknowledge the issue and act according to the maxim because there's an argument over 'how poor', acknowledging the issue neither commits you to a specific strength of action, nor sets you apart from those who might otherwise 'get ahead of you' in the inequalities race.
Binomial issues, however, do not fit this mode well. There's no discussion about 'how white you are'. White privelidge is not measured like income, its assigned like a badge.
The "from each according to their ability" part seems subverted, if you're white you have maximum ability, if you're black you have minimum ability. There's no scale, so people feel scared to commit to judgement about their role in solving the issues.
The "to each according to their needs" part is also subverted because if you're white you have no needs (insofar as this issue is concerned), and if you're black you are 100% the victim (again, just insofar as this issue is concerned). So again people feel afraid to commit, in this case because they're scared their just resentment of those above them will be taken away (the poor white can no longer justifiably resent the rich black).
As I said, I'm not justifying these positions, just giving my opinion as to the answer to the question. -
Judaka
1.7k
I think it isn't unreasonable to bring up establishment opposition to black civil rights leaders in comparison. Reagon/Bush "tough on crime" racist dog-whistling, the entire war on drugs with Clinton, this really wasn't that long ago. These aren't interpretations of crazy far-leftists, we have admissions by those campaigns that they knew exactly what they were doing. Speakers against the practice get called disruptors and get assassinated or locked up. It's hard to not draw parallels between these practices and how Trump reacts to BLM.
Many individuals and groups who spoke out against clear racism had absolutely no business being killed or locked up in a democratic country. It is more of the same in this regard, now I don't like BLM for many reasons but if BLM weren't a racist, leftist, destructive group would it matter? Maybe not, any disruptors fighting against racist policies, who favour justice over order, maybe they'd receive the same opposition.
However, as I already said, BLM are far from the ideal group from my perspective. Anyone who opposes identity politics is going to have a hard time liking BLM, anyone who hates the way racial groups get characterised and prejudiced against is going to struggle. BLM is responsible for some pretty terrible things and the list is growing. There are many reasons for those who know US history and hate racism to NOT support BLM.
I just don't know whether if the group wasn't BLM but instead a moderate group that said enough's enough and laid down the facts in a way that I'd 100% support. Would that group be accepted or would people still complain about how "all lives matter" and say that the US should still be tough on crime and while the system isn't perfect, it's not that bad either.
US law/justice needs a total and complete overhaul, the situation is absolutely absurd but I wonder how many people are willing to accept that. US exceptionalism is quite astounding. -
zookeeper
73Despite living far from the US and not really having discussed BLM with many people, one problem I expect a lot of people to have is simply that they reject any rhetoric which is too dramatic, emotional and hyperbolic to their taste. You quoted the BLM website claiming that the state deliberately inflicts rampant violence on black people and/or systematically targets them for demise, and then they also call themselves liberators
As far as many people are concerned, rational discussion is already off the table at that point. I'd imagine a lot of rationalists and sceptics would fall into that camp.
Just a guess. -
Benkei
7.7kThe Dutch government has once again reiterated it will not apologise for its slavery past because it would be polarising. :vomit:
Apparently some people feel that if the government, as representatives of the State (legal) entity the Netherlands, apologises, that then they are being blamed for the sins of their forefathers. But this is not the case. It's an apology on behalf of the State who existed back then and exists now and is the same legal person. An apology will go a long way when we can admit that the fucking "Golden Age" of the Netherlands was build on slave labour and slave trade (plus robbing resources and killing indigenuous people).
How hard is it to say "my forefathers were assholes and I'm sorry that happened to your forefathers"? -
Asif
241I live in the UK and I stumbled across a BLM protest a couple of weeks ago. I have lived in multiethnic
poor and lower income communities all my life. The experiences of overt racism that BLM and this particular speaker at the protest claims exist against black people Is something that just does not exist at the ground level. Being a person of color it was bizarre that the vast majority of the crowd were white University students.
And to be Frank the speaker was patronising and racist and just appealing to emotion rather than making any sense. I find the dogmatic nature and ideology of a group that is in itself emphasising one race whilst blaming another race for its ills Is disingenuous and purely political and opportunistic. The generic sweeping implication that ALL black people have some sort of homogenous experience and that that they are all targeted or discriminated against carte blanche is ludicrous.
And the word racism is trotted out at every Instance of supposed discrimination by a group that is based on race?! Common sense has left the building. -
Wheatley
2.3kBLM is a political activist movement about the maltreatment of black people in America and around the world. The main focus is about law enforcement and how it negatively affects black people.
While many people applaud BLM for bringing awareness about the maltreatment of blacks, I believe it's way too focused on a single race issue, taking no notice of other important political and environmental problems. -
Ciceronianus
3kYou'd think it should be clear that the phrase "Black Lives Matter" doesn't mean, nor can it be inferred to mean "Only Black Lives Matter" or "Black Lives Matter More than Other Lives." Apparently not, though it's not unlikely that some are well aware of this but nevertheless claim it does. I continue to think that a course in elementary logic and rhetoric should be required at the high school level, but that's one of the things that won't happen.
I think history teaches us that oppressed people have always protested that their lives matter, with good reason as they're treated as if their lives did not. I tend to agree with @180Proof that willful ignorance plays a part in the outrage against the phrase. -
ssu
8.6kThanks for breaking it up for us. Yeah, I thought so... nothing about Marxism.
BLAM!!! :ok:the obvious and necessary qualifier "also" from their anti-racist cri du coeur which should have been, more aptly, BLACK LIVES ALSO MATTER. — 180 Proof
Whites have a lot of angst. All that virtue signalling and stuff from one side and then delirious fears from another side.Lastly though (just riffin' here mind you), perhaps more fundamentally, many white people (seem to me/us to) feel threatened merely by discussing "racism" because they do not believe the survivors of white terror and their continually brutalized descendents only want "Social Justice" and "Equality", but, what we're really after instead, I believe whites believe, is revenge. We say "Reparations", they (most?) hear "revenge" (i.e. "Race War"). — 180 Proof
And yes, your right, some Americans are very fearful of the fact that "whites" aren't going to be a majority soon (meaning 30 years or so from now). For the genuine racists this is the biggest fear. Of course what they don't understand at all that there isn't going to be a new majority: hispanics aren't going to be 50% and surely african americans won't be a majority. But who cares about little things as facts. All they need to see is a documentary from South Africa about the crime there and think "OMG, it's going to be here THE SAME!" That's the new racism. Just like the ludicrous idea of Europe (and especially Sweden) being soon Islamic. -
praxis
6.5kI was irked by it the first time I read or heard the phrase (probably after (or maybe just before) the Eric Garner lynching by unindicted NYPD); the activists missed - dropped? - the obvious and necessary qualifier "also" from their anti-racist cri du coeur which should have been, more aptly, BLACK LIVES ALSO MATTER. 'BLM' is ripe for co-option and parody because it's a categorical, or unconditional, assertion. Cat's out of the bag, so to speak, we're now stuck with more of a slogan than a thesis. — 180 Proof
Hard to believe that anyone inclined to willfully misinterpret BLM is interested in a thesis, regardless of how well reasoned it may be. Also, BLM is a strong statement, whereas BLAM sounds weak. -
NOS4A2
9.2k
The phrase “Black Lives Matter” is a self-evident truth. The group Black Lives Matter was founded by “trained Marxists”, so hopefully we can differentiate between the phrase and the “movement”. -
Benkei
7.7kYeah, how about doing that instead of equating their training to what BLM actually stands for. Not that there is anything wrong with Marxism to begin with but different discussion. And it's clear as day what the point of dredging up a video from 2015 has to do in this discussion. Distraction and poisoning the well.
What BLM pursues is a conservative goal. They demand black people should not have their constitutional right to freedom be violated through excessive force, racial profiling and over-policing of their communities by the police. Defund the police is the policy proposal they believe best reaches that goal. One wonders why people keep objecting to the goal and you'd expect conservatives and Republicans to support it as well. So there's a lot of resistance against a basically conservative demand to respect constitutional rights by Republicans. Is it coincidence Marxists founded BLM instead of Republicans? Or do Republicans perhaps not care about constitutional rights? Or, as I suspect, do they need their racist white base to win any election at all?
Justice sacrificed for power. -
NOS4A2
9.2k
Yeah, how about doing that instead of equating their training to what BLM actually stands for. Not that there is anything wrong with Marxism to begin with but different discussion. And it's clear as day what the point of dredging up a video from 2015 has to do in this discussion. Distraction and poisoning the well.
What BLM pursues is a conservative goal. They demand black people should not have their constitutional right to freedom be violated through excessive force, racial profiling and over-policing of their communities by the police. Defund the police is the policy proposal they believe best reaches that goal. One wonders why people keep objecting to the goal and you'd expect conservatives and Republicans to support it as well. So there's a lot of resistance against a basically conservative demand to respect constitutional rights by Republicans. Is it coincidence Marxists founded BLM instead of Republicans? Or do Republicans perhaps not care about constitutional rights? Or, as I suspect, do they need their racist white base to win any election at all?
Justice sacrificed for power.
They also want to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another”. They also want to “dismantle cisgender privilege”. I can support the premise that excessive force and racial-profiling are wrong without supporting some well-funded, far-left identitarian group who I believe care more about their activist bona fides than about “black lives”. -
Benkei
7.7kThey also want to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another”. — NOS4A2
Where is that quote from?
Edit: let me rephrase, are you sure 1. you quoted them correctly (hint: no) and 2. that you understand what they're saying once you do quote them correctly? -
Enai De A Lukal
211They also want to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another”
Which are also self-evidently good things no less than the proposition that black lives should matter.
But sure, something something Marxism bad mmkay? :lol: -
Enai De A Lukal
211Saw this image a couple weeks ago, thought it summed the matter up extremely well-
-
ssu
8.6kWhere is that quote from? — Benkei
https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/
As it continues with fostering a queer-affirming networks, I don't think this has anything to do with marxism, but just with modern leftist/progressive views, which obviously aren't the main agenda. (And no, I don't believe that this is some "transformed" cultural marxism, just as I believe in that racism is what it meant a decade or two ago.) -
Enai De A Lukal
211
Yeah its the entirely not-crazy idea that care and support should extend beyond the bounds of the immediate family. And of course the other Super Scary Marxist Agenda cited in that post was opposing transgender discrimination. How sinister- what will those diabolical cultural Marxists (lol) think of next? -
Benkei
7.7kYou had to go and explain it! And here I was looking forward to him making a fool of himself even further... Oh well.
-
NOS4A2
9.2k
Which are also self-evidently good things no less than the proposition that black lives should matter.
But sure, something something Marxism bad mmkay?
Not to me. When self-avowed marxists start disrupting families through their make-believe “villages”, I see trouble. No activist network can substitute for family or community, and no one needs to support a well-funded protest organization to fight against racism. So use your hashtags and fist emojis to your heart’s content. -
Wheatley
2.3kHow Jeb Bush Spent $130 Million Running for President With Nothing to Show for It
It's a myth that politics is dictated entirely by money.
Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.
Categories
- Guest category
- The Lounge
- General Philosophy
- Metaphysics & Epistemology
- Philosophy of Mind
- Ethics
- Political Philosophy
- Philosophy of Art
- Logic & Philosophy of Mathematics
- Philosophy of Religion
- Philosophy of Science
- Philosophy of Language
- Interesting Stuff
- Politics and Current Affairs
- Humanities and Social Sciences
- Science and Technology
- Non-English Discussion
- German Discussion
- Spanish Discussion
- Learning Centre
- Resources
- Books and Papers
- Reading groups
- Questions
- Guest Speakers
- David Pearce
- Massimo Pigliucci
- Debates
- Debate Proposals
- Debate Discussion
- Feedback
- Article submissions
- About TPF
- Help
More Discussions
- Other sites we like
- Social media
- Terms of Service
- Sign In
- Created with PlushForums
- © 2024 The Philosophy Forum