OT Black Man In Minnesota Dies After Cop Kneels On His Neck/ Portland Riots (1 Viewer)

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To me, this whole racial unrest as a result of the George Floyd murder is shaping up to be a huge wasted opportunity for BLM. Instead of leveraging his egregious death to instigate major police reforms and increased social spending in the Black community, the energy is getting sapped by useless actions to tear down a bunch of old statues that nobody really cares about, change the national anthem, endless riots, primarily by trouble-makers rather than protesters, and proposals for reparations that are so bloated they could never get off the ground.
 
e_blazer said:
To me, this whole racial unrest as a result of the George Floyd murder is shaping up to be a huge wasted opportunity for BLM. Instead of leveraging his egregious death to instigate major police reforms and increased social spending in the Black community
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How do you mean? Police reform has been by far the biggest message. A bunch of cities pledged to reform police, in some cases through the "defund" method (moving money from more cops on the beat to more spending on infrastructure, downtrodden communities, social workers, etc).

And if you believe that "endless riots" are primarily the work of trouble-makers, how is that BLM wasting the opportunity?
 
e_blazer said:
To me, this whole racial unrest as a result of the George Floyd murder is shaping up to be a huge wasted opportunity for BLM. Instead of leveraging his egregious death to instigate major police reforms and increased social spending in the Black community, the energy is getting sapped by useless actions to tear down a bunch of old statues that nobody really cares about, change the national anthem, endless riots, primarily by trouble-makers rather than protesters, and proposals for reparations that are so bloated they could never get off the ground.
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I do not speak for BLM or their members, I can only go off their official website and some of the things that you are concerned about and attributing to them they are not talking about or advocating.

https://blacklivesmatter.com/news/

https://www.joincampaignzero.org/#vision
 
Minstrel said:
How do you mean? Police reform has been by far the biggest message. A bunch of cities pledged to reform police, in some cases through the "defund" method (moving money from more cops on the beat to more spending on infrastructure, downtrodden communities, social workers, etc).

And if you believe that "endless riots" are primarily the work of trouble-makers, how is that BLM wasting the opportunity?
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First, let me say that I am not saying that BLM is directly responsible for any of the distractions that I listed. I do think that whomever thought up the term "defunding" should never apply for a job in marketing. I don't think that they could have picked a worse term to get conservatives riled up...most of them want more police funding, not less. I get that it's actually a nuanced discussion where what's really being proposed by many is decreasing police responsibility for things that may be better handled by mental health or social services workers. Calling it police reform put it squarely on something that anybody with a decent heart could plainly is needed in the wake of Floyd's and others' murders.

The other things that I listed probably aren't directly related to BLM, but that doesn't mean that they aren't hurting the BLM cause. Fox news runs riot coverage nonstop and at least tacitly links it with the BLM movement. Maybe I've missed it, but has BLM come out strongly against the rioting and whomever is behind it? "Cancelling" statues and proposals to change the anthem have no practical effect on the lives of Black people, but they cost support from people who generally believe that America, despite historical moral issues, is a place that they feel patriotic allegiance to. There may be times when it's appropriate to get into a discussion about such things, but there are bigger fish to fry right now.
 
The only way to give a bad answer to this layup of a question is if you are a racist. Plain and simple.


“Why are African-Americans still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country?” the interviewer, Catherine Herridge of CBS News, asked the president.

“What a terrible question to ask,” Mr. Trump responded. “So are white people. More white people, by the way.”
 
e_blazer said:
The other things that I listed probably aren't directly related to BLM, but that doesn't mean that they aren't hurting the BLM cause. Fox news runs riot coverage nonstop and at least tacitly links it with the BLM movement.
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FOX News and its viewers aren't persuadable (in the main--I'm not saying there aren't 10 people who watch it that couldn't theoretically be persuaded by BLM). If there weren't very many riots, FOX would show whatever they viewed as the "scariest" and FOX News viewers would take it as good reason to view BLM as "anti-white."

"Cancelling" statues and proposals to change the anthem have no practical effect on the lives of Black people, but they cost support from people who generally believe that America, despite historical moral issues, is a place that they feel patriotic allegiance to.
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I agree that pulling down statues and anthem proposals have little practical effect on the daily lives of black people, but BLM isn't one single organization, centrally organized and efficient. It's a large scale, national movement with lots of local branches and leaders. There's no way they could focus like a laser on a single thing with millions of spread out participants. It's inevitable that this spread-out movement is going to lead to a bunch of ancillary actions and ideas that don't directly bear on police reform and structural racism in ways that provide immediate benefit. I don't think that's "wasting the moment"--no moment can be capitalized on the way you seem to be suggesting. It's not like anyone knew this was coming and had carefully planned for months how to "take advantage of the opportunity" nor could they have even if they had planned specifically for this with how distributed the movement is. The civil rights movements in the 1960s were also not as nationally focused as you're talking about, even with as central a leader as Martin Luther King Jr.

I think BLM is making the best of what they have available. As I mentioned, various cities (and even states) have already either started the process of change or pledged to do so and this is just the first month. Full blown change doesn't happen immediately, but what they've done is spotlight this issue and made it either the top menu item on the national discourse or, at least, second to the coronavirus.
 
Minstrel said:
FOX News and its viewers aren't persuadable (in the main--I'm not saying there aren't 10 people who watch it that couldn't theoretically be persuaded by BLM). If there weren't very many riots, FOX would show whatever they viewed as the "scariest" and FOX News viewers would take it as good reason to view BLM as "anti-white."



I agree that pulling down statues and anthem proposals have little practical effect on the daily lives of black people, but BLM isn't one single organization, centrally organized and efficient. It's a large scale, national movement with lots of local branches and leaders. There's no way they could focus like a laser on a single thing with millions of spread out participants. It's inevitable that this spread-out movement is going to lead to a bunch of ancillary actions and ideas that don't directly bear on police reform and structural racism in ways that provide immediate benefit. I don't think that's "wasting the moment"--no moment can be capitalized on the way you seem to be suggesting. It's not like anyone knew this was coming and had carefully planned for months how to "take advantage of the opportunity" nor could they have even if they had planned specifically for this with how distributed the movement is. The civil rights movements in the 1960s were also not as nationally focused as you're talking about, even with as central a leader as Martin Luther King Jr.

I think BLM is making the best of what they have available. As I mentioned, various cities (and even states) have already either started the process of change or pledged to do so and this is just the first month. Full blown change doesn't happen immediately, but what they've done is spotlight this issue and made it either the top menu item on the national discourse or, at least, second to the coronavirus.
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Interesting thoughts. I agree that a less than unified movement has an impossible task in having a laser focus on a single issue. That said, the converse can be true for public opinion. What starts as a drawing together in opposition to an egregious injustice can easily disperse when there are too many disparate voices trying to make their tangential issues heard. All of a sudden it's, "Oh, those BLM folks are for anarchy." Or, "They're tearing down American history." Pretty soon the support has evaporated.
 
e_blazer said:
That said, the converse can be true for public opinion. What starts as a drawing together in opposition to an egregious injustice can easily disperse when there are too many disparate voices trying to make their tangential issues heard. All of a sudden it's, "Oh, those BLM folks are for anarchy." Or, "They're tearing down American history." Pretty soon the support has evaporated.
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I think that's both inevitable and unlikely to happen.

For people who don't think structural or institutional racism exists, even if they were shocked by the George Floyd killing, they were always going to say, "The Floyd killing was awful, I'm glad the cops in question are being charged. That said, it shows that we have justice, racism isn't really a major concern anymore except for a few bad apples and I'm getting a little sick of every isolated incident being turned into a big 'American society is racist' issue."

For people who either do believe it or at least are willing to consider it might be a thing, I don't think further examples of accepted or normalized racism, even if minor, are going to dissuade them from wanting to fight.

I guess what I'm saying is that most people view BLM through the prism of their own beliefs. This means that I don't believe BLM or what's going on is changing a lot of minds (though it is changing some)--I think all of the stuff that's been happening has been firing the passions of those who either believe in institutional racism or else are open to the idea. (That said, attitude on BLM have shifted since 2018, in their favor, but I think that's due mostly to the leftward drift of the society on social issues and a reaction to Trump.)
 
How bout just High school. Seems fitting for Portland kids
 
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Minstrel said:
I don't think we'll give $151M per descendant. We can probably lower that to a few million bucks per descendant and save a huge amount!
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I was thinking more like a hearty handshake and a pat on the back. Oh come on, I'm just kidding.
 
calvin natt said:
The only way to give a bad answer to this layup of a question is if you are a racist. Plain and simple.


“Why are African-Americans still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country?” the interviewer, Catherine Herridge of CBS News, asked the president.

“What a terrible question to ask,” Mr. Trump responded. “So are white people. More white people, by the way.”
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Well we've known Donald and his father were both racists for many decades.
 
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