The New York Times published an interesting essay today that includes a chart showing support for Black Lives Matter in the wake of the George Floyd murder. But it's even more interesting if you put some dates on the chart:
Support for BLM starts to increase within both parties at the beginning of April, following a couple of lower-profile police killings. George Floyd was killed on May 25, and that's when support for BLM hits its peak.
But within three weeks, Republican support has plummeted to its level at the beginning of the year, and by autumn it's another 15 points lower. Democratic support also wanes, but only a little bit.
As you'd expect, since Republicans are mostly white while Democrats have a large Black contingent, white support for BLM went down sharply after the George Floyd murder while Black support went down only a little. Without further crosstabs, it's hard to say whether race or party ID is the most important factor here.
I remember writing something a couple of months after the George Floyd murder about BLM having a "moment." I got some editorial pushback on that and revised it. But compared to support for BLM right before the George Floyd murder, the BLM protests of last summer produced:
- A huge decline in BLM support among white people.
- A big decline in support among Hispanics.
- A modest decline among "Other."
- A modest increase in support among Black people.
Even among Black respondents, who registered an eight-point spike immediately after the George Floyd murder, support for BLM by the end of the year was only about two points higher than it was just before the George Floyd murder.
It's pretty obvious that the massive downturn among Republicans is due largely to Fox News and its cronies. But every other group also ended the year with less support for BLM than it had before the protests. The only exception is among Black people, and even that's a close call.
So a moment it was. The question now is how to turn it into more than that.
The age old question - how to protest effectively?
To make it a caricature, the petite bourgeoisie is always against street protests. They're too scared for their lawns.
Yet I've been told that street protests work. I'm not sure how to reconcile those 2 facts.
Peut-être, si'ils pourraient évaluer plus des personnes que les choses.
Well, one supposes that there's probably different effects and potentials, that it is overly abstract to say "street protests work." (likely in some circumstances they do, but as a generalization asserting they always work in order to defend the choice, probably not true)
"To make it a caricature, the petite bourgeoisie is always against street protests."
At least you're honest about it being a caricature. I'd say that the "petite bourgeoisie" were divided. There was a huge chunk of left-wing "petite bourgeoisie" who not only favored the nonviolent street protests, but treated the violence accompanying the protests as something that shouldn't be criticized or condemned, and some *cough*Vicky Osterweil*cough* even defended it.
(Ironically, as they were accusing critics of being privileged, they were blinded by privilege themselves. Since they were usually largely unaffected by the violence, they could abstract it as somehow sticking it to "the man," while failing to think through how all the looting impacts people of lesser means.)
What was the reaction to the protests in the 60's? Certainly not favorable among whites and Republicans. There was no Fox News then.
Turns out Nixon was elected. Then re-elected. So...
"Protest" is a big term.
There's dignified protest ala Martin Luther King, which seems to work well.
There's crazy-person protest ala Chicago 1968 which is a waste of everyone's time/
And there's violent protest ala Rodney King riots, who's primary effect is to make the living situation of everyone who lives the riot are worse, and to turn off 95% of the population against your demands.
I don't think the actual BLM protests drew much opposition in this particular case; the riots that occurred were not too closely tied to them, much less than the situation of the 60s.
BLM's problems were once the ideological agenda got out, and the general lack of concern by the loud supporters for the cravenness of their leaders.
Yes, protests is too broad a term probably to be analytically very useful.
Protests that manage to attract the middle class, are disciplined and avoid radical sounding rhetoric will clearly be harder to spin and attack as radical than those that are not disciplined, have associated crime (looting, arson)...
Civil-rights protests of the MLK era: ‘dignified’ on whose part. The depraved brutality of the police and state troopers, shown nationwide on television, is what turned many Americans against segregation.
‘Crazy-person protest ala Chicago 1968’: some protesters were unconventional, but it was the cops who rioted. Overall, Vietnam-era protests are generally believed to have been effective despite the backlash.
They were ineffective and didn't stop the war. The war itself was unpopular. You still don't get it.
what was the expression of the war's unpopularity?
Actually it was more complicated than that. The Republican and Democratic parties both had liberals, moderates, and conservatives back then. White people reacted as you describe, but it was plenty of Democrats too, and especially in the South.
So, yeah, white people, full stop.
Using White Guilt analysis rather is myopic Progressive response. The decline among Latino and other indicate rather clearly that simply resolving it down to Oh White People is politically myopic.
Kevin, I'm a middle aged white guy like you, so I am hesitant to even address this issue, because I'm not sure we need one more middle aged white guy's opinions. But, I have a feeling that the data on Black Lives Matter may not be aligned with people's support for racial justice in America overall. BLM has been tarred by Fox and right wing media in general, and many less informed folks might just have a scary association with the phrase as a result. I think that's a shame, but it is my hope that white Americans are more sympathetic to Black justice in America now, and that the protests last summer in the aftermath of George Floyd's killing have created a lasting shift in white Americans' thinking.
So is there any data out there about that? I think it's likely white Americans may be scared of the BLM title, like they are frightened of the word "antifa." What I want to know is if they are more supportive now of the actual concerns of BLM: police brutality, fairness in housing, racial profiling, systemic racism, etc.
I don't watch Fox News or other right wing media but I was (and am) very turned off by the "defund the police" rhetoric of the BLMers as well as their protest tactics. Here in Tampa they frequently blocked streets, vandalized, and harrasssed innocent people out eating at restaurants. They made a very bad name for themselves and lost a lot of sympathy for their cause.
And I too am a middle aged white guy and I'll give my opinion on whatever I want. What the hell is wrong with you that you think you need to remain silent on any topic because of your race or age? Grow up. If someone doesn't like your opinion they don't need to pay any attention to you.
On any issue that touches upon race in America: the beginning of wisdom, for white folks like me and you, is to listen -- to folks of color. Yes, I have opinions and I may voice them, but my opinions are woefully under-informed, as I have never experienced, and will never, what it is like to be brown or black in America. My God, man, is that so hard to understand?
Well said.
@ pflash So I guess, for consistency's sake, you think that black people's opinions about whiteness are woefully underinformed, as they have never experienced, and will never, what it is like to be white in America, and therefore the beginning of wisdom is for them to listen?
There's a word for devaluing anybody's opinion about anything as underinformed simply by virtue of the race of the person voicing the opinion: that word is racism.
I wonder what black people's opinions you're thinking of? What great burdens do whites carry as a consequence of black privilege in America? What condescending advice have they offered because they know we can't manage it on our own? Condescension reenacts, I suspect, the very oppression at the root of the racial problem.
Listen, we can and will offer opinions, but Atticus objected to Quincy's mere hesitancy, a hesitancy occasioned by Q's commendable awareness of the racial imbalance of power in this regard. It's just politeness really.
Your "color-blind" application of the "racist" label ignores entirely this imbalance of power. It's not a 2-way street exactly -- at least there aren't the same number of lanes going in each direction. We whites, ironically, carry a greater burden to watch our rhetoric, due to the history that has cursed our nation. (That's not too strong a word.) The racial problem is not adequately addressed by color-blindness, but by a relentless analysis of the relations of power. This is a pet peeve of mine.
If I defer to the great legacy of black oppression, but don't offer my white counterparts the exact same deference, this isn't racist; it's simple awareness of where history has placed us in a power hierarchy. Likewise, blacks may be prejudiced and they may discriminate, but "racism" in America goes one direction only, and it's not pointed our way.
Errrrr ok. You wrote much with no content. There is no privileged. Just debt and debt expansion. So negros are mad because they don't get debt and the beneficiary of debt??? Maybe you need to see your own failures muttering bourgeois morality to somebody else. I am having nothing of it.
And 'black and brown' Americans have never experienced what it is like to be white in America.
My god, stop apologizing for being part of the people who created the most power polity on earth, one that millions of black and brown people have immigrated to, voluntarily. Mostly to escape countries run by black and brown people.
@Mitchell Don't get me wrong: I celebrate American freedom and success every day of the year. But I'm a little baffled that, given the history as it is, you don't acknowledge that there is deference to be paid to the historical legacy. The harms done don't disappear in an instant or a decade or a generation. Do you really not believe there is any "implicit" or systemic racism? Or do you think such racism and its effects are distributed evenly across the color divide? Hmm.
I'll just add that perhaps one day China will be the world's most powerful polity, and I would hope that somebody then would apologize for what's being done now, for instance, to the Uyghurs.
No, I don't acknowledge it.
First, the vast majority of 'brown' people came here (or their ancestors came here) voluntarily, long after the 'Civil rights' revolution. And that is increasingly true of black people in this country. I read the other day that more Africans have immigrated to the US than the total number of African slaves imported.
Second, even for the black people here....they are the richest black people on this planet (meaning, people of primarily sub-Saharan descent). Whatever trials and tribulations their ancestors endured, they benefit immensely from being in a country founded and mostly developed by white people. You'll notice that 'back to Africa' movements never get much response.
Third, in this day and age it is ridiculous to say that whites are privileged...every week it seems that there is another (usually female) fake black person discovered. People don't try to 'pass' from a 'privileged' group to an unprivileged group. And not how ferociously the bounds of blackness are patrolled...don't believe me, talk to Rachel Dolezal.
Finally, whites have zero power in this society as whites. There is no Congressional White Caucus. No ADL for whites, etc.
"the beginning of wisdom, for white folks like me and you, is to listen -- to folks of color."
But which "folks of color" do you have in mind? It's all too easy to assume that activists who are some minority are representative of that minority, but that's often not true at all. Freddie deBoer gave this a fancy name: the "synecdoche problem".
White liberals are to the left of the "average" views of many minorities (see Matt Yglesias' "Great Awokening" piece), but it seems to me that they often don't realize that because the people of color to whom they listen are activists who are at least as far left as they are.
@jjramsey You may be surprised that I agree with you. I continue to have my share of vigorous disagreements with the Woke.
You're free to give your opinion (though I wish I could block you like I was able to on MJ.) We're free to ignore it. That's just how it's gonna be, and there's not one damn thing you can do about it.
Plenty of middle-aged white voters out there. We have a diversity of opinions, and we are not disqualified in general to voice them.
And yet right here a dude depreciated his comments because of his status as a 'white middle aged man'.
I think this is about right -- Fox and right-wing media convinced the broader (white) public that BLM protesters were responsible for the incidents of violence and property damage during marches this summer when it was virtually all the actions of unaffiliated hooligans and anarchist groups, and not a few far-right provocateurs trying to delegitimize the movement. Mission accomplished.
Ah, yes, the 'far right' provocateurs. Whatever happened to that 'umbrella man' white supremacist dude in Minneapolis anyway? We were promised he would be identified, he never was. There were a few 'bugaloos' around during the riots, but they aren't far right. Indeed they seem to align with BLM.
Like EVERYTHING in Social Science the details matter. In this case the issue of importance is what EXACTLY does the responder mean by BLM (and support for BLM)?
Does BLM mean the literal words Black Lives Matter (as opposed to Ta-Nehisi's occasional more hysterical "White Americans have always committed genocide against Blacks and that tradition continues today"?
Does it mean acceptance of the full BLM agenda (which rapidly grew from "police should behave better" to "defund the police" to "let's put the Black in Black September")?
Or does it mean support for the actual leaders of BLM, who seem to be less concerned than one might hope with exactly how the money that flows into their movement is then disbursed.
Much of this handwringing about "oh terrible republicans" is a deliberate attempt to conflate these three points.
If BLM meant ONLY the first point, I suspect the support would remain high But of course the usual leftist over-extension occurred, with the usual pushback.
And the corruption issue is no small thing. Americans mostly have very little toleration for corruption. We saw this in the massive fall in popular support for unions after union corruption became well-known. We saw something similar in widespread support for televangelists. Even today probably the strongest reason the police have less support than they could is the perception that there's too much mutual ass-covering, an acceptance (yes, even among white republicans) that there is too much protection of police by corruption within their ranks.
So, interpret this as you like. But I interpret it as:
- Americans (almost all of them) were horrified by a few particular cases that they saw
- but they recoiled as soon as they saw that their support for "bad police should be punished for bad behavior" was being converted into "race war is about to begin, and step one should be to destroy every police force"
- and this wasn't helped when the corruption details against BLM leaders came out, and the widespread response by BLM supporters seemed to be "OK, so what? it's time for us to get our corruption on now, if we can"
Americans are intolerant of corruption? It depends on whose doing it, I guess. Seventy million of them voted for Trump in November.
Once again, corruption is a word with many meanings. I suspect you can find a number of people who would simultaneously agree that what Jim and Tammy Faye were engaged in was corruption, and that what Trump engaged in was not corruption.
I'm not justifying this; I'm simply saying that some behavior is easier to interpret as very clearly corruption than other behavior. And this becomes more so, the closer the people involved are to "my kind of people", the easier it is to imagine the type of thing that happened. In particular fundraising corruption ("send me money to do X", followed by putting the money in my back pocket) is easily understood and widely loathed.
Trump, of course, appears to have engaged in this wrt the recounts. But even there it's a tricky business. He could (and presumably is) making the argument that those recount contributions are being used the best way possible, to build "a Republican Party that will never let this sort of thing happen again".
There are two types of commenters. Those who want to understand, and those who want to score points. Which type do you want to be?
I just think plenty of people can talk themselves into saying that they are intolerant of corruption when it is done by the side that they are already predisposed to see as the bad guys.
Uh, I am just commenting. There is no scoreboard. I'm not a troll or looking for an argument. I'm just expressing an opinion. Sheesh.
There are more than two types of commenters. The best among those here are the ones who can cite evidence, post links, reference data, and/or reason cogently, as opposed to making unsupported assertions or spouting opinions pulled out of thin air or worse places.
Trump’s corruption goes back decades. Jim and Tammy Faye were armatures compared to Trump. The stuff he did while President is as bad as it gets, but there was plenty before:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/9/28/12904136/donald-trump-corrupt
And while the article headline indicates it is comprehensive, I can think of corrupt Trump business deals not mentioned such as the Baja Condos and Trump Mortgage. There’s nothing tricky about this. If a person can excuse Trump’s corruption then they can excuse anything.
I hear Trump is corrupt...I have seen zero evidence. Despite the Deep State (it's real folks) with its Five Eyes being after him before he was even elected.
And no, a politician asking for dirt on another politician is not 'corrupt' --it's a whole trade called 'opposition research'.
The drinks are on MItch!
Get him a bib.
Pravda.
"Like EVERYTHING in Social Science the details matter. In this case the issue of importance is what EXACTLY does the responder mean by BLM (and support for BLM)?"
Absolutely. In fact, this is even more crucial than usual with regards to BLM than in other contexts. The civil rights protests were led and organized by organizations that had headquarters, designated spokespeople, and a clear and consistent message of what they wanted. BLM is an informal organization, and the term has become something of a Rorschach test.
I think it is what Nate Silver would call a "bad use of polling" to even ask what people think about BLM. Polls should ask about support for particular policies or goals.
The Lighthouse Paradox.
How much did the BLM movement affect election turnout in 2020? Isn't that the better metric?
I lot of people turned out because they hated Trump, a lot because they loved him.
You didn't answer my question. Tell us again about how you're "1.7 standard deviations" above average, mathwise.
I'm basically off the charts verbal-wise. 'Perfect' GRE (which isn't of course 'perfect', just like .01 percentile.
Uh-huh. How about that? You don't say? I could not have told that from your postings.
"I couldn't not have told that"? Ugh!
"So a moment it was. The question now is how to turn it into more than that."
Stop saying "defund the police".
Stop blocking traffic at your protests.
Stop vandalizing.
Stop harassing innocent people out minding their own business by yelling in their faces with bullhorns and calling them priveledged and part of the problem.
These are things the BLMers did in my neck of the woods and they immediately lost a lot of the initial support they had. Even the liberal editorial section of the Tampa Bay Times wrote they need to stop with these clown tactics if they have any chance of gaining back support for their cause.
How to say this? You, um, 'lack credibility'.
How to say this? You, um, are a chronic liar.
Chuckle. "Who you gonna believe? Me or your lyin' eyes?" Face it, 'Atticus', you have a reputation. That's entirely on you and no one else. Well, that's why the Lord gave us free will apparently. To see what choices we'd make ...
You’ve repeatedly told bald faced lies about me. You know you lie. Others may not know unless you lie about them as well. Two recent lies that come to mind: You said I failed out of college and never graduated. (You said this more than once.) And in another post you said (paraphrasing) that I attempted to be a law enforcement officer but couldn’t make it past the training.
Why would you make up these kind of lies about people? Just because they have a different opinion than you? And then to be such a hypocrite and say that I lack credibility?
Sigh. I said that you didn't graduate with a degree in English, like you kept trying to imply. Get it it straight. And as for the rest, many of the commenters here have not forgotten your posts on Mother Jones. Telling them that they can't believe their own eyes is ... a suboptimal strategy.
For that matter, we still remember your 'mail-in voter fraud is easier than the walk-in kind' along with your repeated refusal to offer any evidence of that.
Really son, straighten out, sober up, and start mending fences.
Scent of Violets,
So that is another lie — that I didn’t graduate with an English degree. I did. It was technically English with an emphasis in business. More business than a business minor and less than a double major. I then hit an MBA. For whatever reason you don’t want to believe it. Not sure why and it doesn’t really matter. But I’d appreciate it if you don’t tell lies about me.
Err ... how to say this? You don't get to decide for me whether I think you're lying or not. _I_ do.
Anything else you need cleared up, Tuds? Now about that whole "mail-in vote fraud is easier than the in-person kind" ...
Jackass.
Scent of Violets,
Yes, can you shed some light on your comment in which you accused my of always wanting to be in law enforcement but couldn't get accepted? (Or failed out of training, or whatever your exact words were?)
I have never said anything close to insinuating I wanted to be a cop, let a alone that I actually took steps towards becoming one. I can understand maybe you not believing something I said (i.e. that I have an English degree). But that comment about not being able to be a cop was pure fabrication. Can you explain that one?
C'mon man.
Civiqs operates exactly like USC's old online polling, by selecting a group of "representative" people who are polled regularly.
Any error they make is amplified by the fact that they can never correct their errors based on sampling, and on top of that, they're compounding participation bias.
Well, my own view of the George Floyd affair is that at the beginning I was very sympathetic. A large number of cops in this country are ill trained, a large number tend to be bullies. I am sympathetic with them too...they get paid to handle the unpleasant and not infrequently dangerous situations. Then again, they are paid pretty well. And unlike many of my confreres on the Right I think it would be good to have well trained, social and psychological workers embedded in policies departments.
But as usual the Left way overplayed its hand. Floyd was not an angel, and his actions contributed immensely to his death. Black men are not targeted by police any more than the relative crime rates would indicate that they be targeted. Plenty of white men are killed by cops -- they tend to go mostly unnoticed.
Again I'll bring up the egregious Kelly Thomas case. No angel he either, but didn't deserve to be beaten to death by a Hispanic cop under the supervision of a black sergeant. This happened right in Kevin Drum's backyard, but the only thing on the web with those four names == Kevin Drum, Kelly Thomas -- are my own comments here.
Derp. Also, we already know what you're going to say on any given subject. So why do you even bother to post?
Left wing??? BLM itself could be split into a left/right between its black capitalism supporters vs pop-Marxist who know little about Marxism.
"Floyd was not an angel, and his actions contributed immensely to his death."
Ah yes. Because as the Fifth Amendment reads today: "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation... unless that person is not an angel, then the authorities can do whatever they want to that person, up to and including immediate execution without a trial."
Well yeah, Miss Taylor's boyfriend waving a gun while cops were planning on raiding a black drug dealer, goes back to black cultural issues. They must get rid of their criminal culture system that is holding them back.
As is usually the case with habitual drunks, Shootie is his own worst enemy.
No, but the post-death hagiography (that means, 'saint writing') of Floyd would make him seem such. In a better America, Floyd or Kelly Thomas could be presented 'warts and all' and people would still be upset by his killing.
I will say that having watched the trial, I found Chauvin's defense quite convincing and believe the man was basically railroaded.
Another “non-angel” was executed by police who were so proud of how they did their jobs of upholding the law that they said he crashed into a tree when their body cams showed them tasing, punching and handcuffing him in the George Floyd Memorial Prone Position for - yep - nine minutes.
https://www.vox.com/2021/5/23/22449890/ronald-greene-police-killed-video-body-cam-reform
Thankfully, under the Mitchell Young 5th Amendment Non-Angel Clause, he allegedly had alcohol and cocaine in his system so the cops will likely get away with their brutality, their falsifying a police report on what happened (twice!) and (for some of them) turning off their body cams against official procedure calling for them to be on.
Sidebar: why can’t body cam manufacturers simply not put an on/off switch on their body cams?
Perhaps you didn't read my initial post. I do think some cops are not suited to the profession. The difference is that I see this problem affecting white people too, and I also see that cops have a tough job and their encounters with the public go right probably 99.9% of the time.
Back in the 90s and 00s Ronald Greene would have been excoriated for drunk driving.
End of the year is a number of news cycles later than the time of the peak. For racists, end of the year gave them plenty of time to get worked up by Fox and friends.
"Black lives matter" is a good message, but as a slogan it should be retired, as it somehow alienates many of the people whose ears you might want to borrow.
I'm pretty sure any slogan black people come up with will manage to "alienate" other people. After all, nobody interpreted phrases like "think of the children" to mean don't think at all about adults... or "breast cancer awareness" to mean all other cancers don't deserve any attention... or even "blue lives matter" to mean civilian lives don't matter (although by now it does appear like the people who yelled "blue lives matter" last year really don't think regular civilian lives or even Capitol Police lives matter at all).
But as soon as black people started saying "black lives matter" it somehow got construed as "only black lives matter." I guarantee you, whatever new slogan black people come up with for "we want to be treated decently like other human beings are" will be dissected and denigrated within weeks of its coinage.
Sticking with a slogan that is failing is not fostering progress. Give it up and keep trying with some new words. There may be phrases that hold up better against the right-wing noise. Maybe there's no advantage to having one prominent slogan.
“Sticking with a slogan that is failing is not fostering progress. Give it up and keep trying with some new words.”
Black people have been using different words to ask for decent treatment for over a century. Equal opportunity. Affirmative action. I have a dream. All eventually get denigrated or twisted so as to justify the continuation of seeing them as less than equal citizens to white people. I don’t think there is any “perfect” combination of any words that exist in the English language to describe what black people want that Fox News and the rest of the right wing couldn’t manage to turn white people against black people for uttering.
But prove me wrong. Come up with a slogan simple and catchy enough to be hashtag-able and easily repeated out loud by hundreds of thousands in a protest that also cannot be manipulated by media people to pit white people against black people.
I think the issue is not the slogan, it's what is desired. The demands that are made at different times are mutually inconsistent and incompatible.
This is not helped by creating an environment where anyone who points out this mutual incompatibility, or the consequences (sometimes predicted, sometimes already measured, sometimes visible from similar programs in other locations or at other times) is branded a racist so that everyone is now supposed to ignore that person and the incompatibility or problem that was pointed out.
Ask Malcolm Gladwell, Thomas Sowell, John McWhorter -- all shunned for doing this sort of thing. And they could go far further than a white person could in pointing out the issues and contradictions.
I'm not one who thinks he can offer the perfect slogan as endpoint.
You’re right. The dislike towards “Black Lives Matter” as a slogan is not fair. Good point. Unfortunately, whether it’s fair or not just doesn’t matter. If it’s not working then move on and try again.
He's not saying that it isn't fair. He's saying that it's disingenuous. You see the difference, I trust?
See my comment to Jerry above. I simply do not believe there is any combination of words that (1) black people could use to describe what they want - i.e. true equality to everyone else in society - and (2) couldn’t be twisted by racially-motivated white people to use as a cudgel against those same black people for merely uttering the words. Black people have been searching for Those Magic Words That Will Win Over More White People Than They Repel since at least the Jim Crow era, which to me is pretty strong evidence that those words don’t exist.
Sorry, but this post is lolz. Lame. Why even put black in its phrase then??? You could care less about it when a white man dies at the hands of police. You probably cheered.
Why put blue in Blue Lives Matter if really All Lives Matter? You probably cheered when cops were injured at the Capitol on Jan 6. Thanks for making the world a worse place with your presence.
Well said.
This would be a more convincing claim in 1960.
But in 2021 we have had ~60 years of argument that begins as "we just want to be treated equally" but ends in court cases insisting that *equal* treatment (eg testing for jobs, or testing for university slots) is not good enough, that what is demanded is in fact not equal treatment but priority access.
Yes, yes, I am well aware of all the arguments made for affirmative action believe me. But you don't get to have it both ways! You can't insist that on even days that all you want is "be treated like other human beings are" and on odd days that unequal treatment is justified.
This is the cancer that aggressive, endless, affirmative action has produced.
And it will never go away until affirmative action goes away.
Oh, you can shut down people saying it, you can shut down public discussion. But you can't shut down what people think.
That's the thing about respect. You can demand dignity, dignity is a social interaction. But you can't demand respect, respect is an internal response, not a visible interaction. All you can do is create a climate of fake respect -- and everyone on both sides knows it's fake.
There is a reason plenty of smart African-Americans were are and are opposed to affirmative action -- they completely understood and understand this dynamic.
Hell, even Frederic Douglass said this: "The great majority of human duties are of this negative character. If men were born in need of crutches, instead of having legs, the fact would be otherwise. We should then be in need of help, and would require outside aid; but according to the wiser and better arrangement of nature, our duty is done better by not hindering than by helping our fellowmen; or, in other words, the best way to help them is just to let them help themselves."
1) Frederick Douglass: He has been dead 125 years. What would he say today, after a century-and-a-half of hindering?
2) Everything else you said: Rubbish.
Exactly how have whites hindered blacks? Even under Jim Crow blacks were free to start business, run newpapers and banks, establish their own schools and even towns. There were a few instances of race riots directed against blacks...usually as the result of black violence against individual whites. But by an large whites left blacks alone to do what they wanted.
I kinda like the United Negro College Fund's 'A mind is a terrible thing to waste'.
I think that the slogan "Black lives matter" would not have been fine, were it not for the fact that when people (e.g. Bernie Sanders) would follow it up with "all lives matter" they got rebuked for saying that. So it was supporters of "Black lives matter" who themselves implied that other lives didn't matter.
An "own goal," as they say.
And by the way, unless all lives matter, ultimately, no lives matter.
Well, there was that, although I'm not sure there was that much furor over people saying "all lives matter". I don't even remember Bernie saying it. I thought some other Democratic presidential candidate did.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/black-lives-matter-protesters-shut-down-bernie-sanders-rally/
Happened to a few other politicians as well.
OF COURSE, if you live in a bubble you are unaware of what groups you support are doing! Perhaps the answer is to start by assuming that, just possibly, the critics are correct, that they're not motivated purely by some cartoon racism, but are actually aware of more facts and more sides to the story than you are?
Do you have the same contempt for the people who claim Blue Lives Matter? If All Lives Matter, aren’t the people who claim blue lives matter really implying the lives of everyone who isn’t a cop don’t matter?
They are kinda lame too.
Got it completely 180 wrong in one. What these people are saying is that _black_lives_matter too_. Note that last word.
And since you deliberately got it wrong, guess what I think of you? There has _got_ to be a way to block these trolls.
My own two cents on BLM (if anyone even wants them): I don’t think a decentralized type of protest movement is typically very effective. “Defund the police” is probably the only clear message that anyone remembers from the protests of last summer (other than “black lives matter”), and that’s a wildly unpopular - and self destructive - message. But even if BLM activists themselves hated that message, what are they going to do about it? Who’s in charge?
I may be old-school, but I tend to think a coherent movement needs a coherent leader, or set of leaders, and that a coherent message needs to get ironed out. Maybe they can even develop a plan and thereby protest towards a set of specific goals. But everything last summer appeared to me, quite frankly, as largely pointless. What was accomplished except to promote a slogan - defund the police - which probably hurt BLM’s potential allies at the November elections?
As it so happens, I went to one protest last summer. The protest was in honor of the Pulse nightclub shooting. In honor of the (almost entirely) gay men who were killed in that incident, a bell was rung 50 times. And one or two people who occupy various roles in organizations for gay people got up to speak. And they spoke well. But, times being what they were, it was basically impossible to do a protest without incorporating BLM. So, two or three BLM people spoke as well. And I’m sure they meant well. But, quite frankly, they came across as having no ideas. One of them said he was angry and that Black Live F*#ing matter. The others were similar. And I was left with the clear impression that they just didn’t have anything of potentially constructive value to say.
Shaun King volunteers to lead Black Lives Matter.
Well, volunteers isn't the right word, since he plans to skim a healthy amount of the donations.
What happened in early 2021 to cause a drop in Hispanic support?
The streets are awash in guns and homicides are up.
"Defund the Police" was bad. "Demilitarize the Police" would work better. Promoting both police reform and a social worker strike force that can respond to some 911 calls would work better--the police are not the best at handling mental health issues. They should spend their time dealing with the upsurge in homicides.
There's some uncomfortable truths in digging into the increased homicide. And uncomfortable truths are always problematic for activists of all sorts.
BLM is a media created invention. I suspect Hispanics noticed nobody cares about their own police related killing s, no more than whites which are killed the most by cops.
Let's also remember blacks are 25% of the Democratic party, not that large and heavily concentrated down south. I think the 2024 Democratic primary is going to be very very contentious, especially if a candidate can put enough delegates together from white voters blocking who the blacks want.
My first reaction to BLM, was "it's about time." I haven't followed all the details, so I may be fairly representative of much of the population. I'm not sure how to separate BLM from identity politics - are they totally separate? So, where I'm totally on board with making police accountable (and especially to poor and black people as they seem to be suffering the most from bad policing), I'm not on board with sorting out everyone by the color of their skin. If you were to ask me how I felt about BLM, I don't think I could give you an answer because I don't know what it stands for right now.
+1
Support for or rejection of BLM is a proxy for whether you want pretty radical changes in society or not. Over time, after passions have cooled, conservatives will reiterate their reluctance to accept change (they might even double down), liberals will still embrace it. And Hispanics are demonstrating that they are pretty conservative.
BLM isn't change. BLM is about covering up the black degeneracy within its culture. BLM is a conservative movement in many respects.
What's it going to take to ban this troll?
You should be banned. Your the troll that makes idiotic post after post.
"You're". That idiotic enough for you 😉
There are at least some black intellectuals who agree with him.
Your response that you want to ban someone who does nothing but continually remind you that your opinions are not universal, that some people disagree with you, is more telling than you can possibly imagine.
THAT RESPONSE more than anything else, is why so much of America is terrified of "BLM the movement" and its penumbra of associated woke causes. This is not racism, not conservatism, not capitalism; but an understanding that the people whose knee jerk response to alternative opinions is "ban them" are the worst of all the bad options available.
+1
There still seems to be a lot of support for police reform, and the public is less accepting of police shootings today than it was a few years ago, so perhaps misgivings about BLM as an organization or a slogan are not all that important in the end.
Lolz, nope. Nobody likes the pigs dude. Police reform was popular in the 80's, 90's and 00's as well. I mean, you just don't get it. Reform already happened.
It isn't front of mind on the left because there aren't active protests. And the Fox effect is working as effectively as always.
And the whole "Defund" rhetoric was an epic fail. But progressive messaging has always seemed more about alienating soft support rather than winning new allies. It's all about those purity good feels.
yeah i remember discussing "defund" with someone either at mj or wa mo. defund didn't really mean defund, he argued. if you got to explain what you mean, you've already lost.
Exactly. Had that same conversation. It's called a "slogan" cuz it's supposed to communicate efficiently.
The NYT article that Kevin cites is part of their "George Floyd and America Project." Another excellent and thought provoking article written by Nicholas Kristof for the project is "If Only There Were a Viral Video for Our Jim Crow Education System."
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/21/opinion/sunday/education-racism-segregation.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Two things about the "Why can't they be nice and dignifies loke MLK and the Civil Rights movement
1961: “Americans were asked whether tactics such as ‘sit-ins’ and demonstrations by the civil rights movement had helped or hurt the chances of racial integration in the South. More than half, 57 percent, said such demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience had hurt chances of integration.” — Gallup
1963: “A Gallup poll found that 78 percent of white people would leave their neighborhood if many black families moved in. When it comes to MLK’s march on Washington, 60 percent had an unfavorable view of the march.” — Cornell University’s Roper Center
1964: “Less than a year after [Dr King’s] march, Americans were even more convinced that mass demonstrations harmed the cause, with 74 percent saying they felt these actions were detrimental to achieving racial equality and just 16 percent saying they were helping it.” — Gallup
And this was for demonstrations that were mainly taking place in the South, in large part not affecting the people polled.
Considering institutional racism was being challenged vs whining blacks covering up their own racism and criminal activity.....your Point is dead.
So, when a group in Seattle, that is mostly white people declares a police-free zone they are taking attention away from George Floyd's murder, rather than directing attention to it. I can tell that particular thing, for instance, had a big -and mostly negative - impact. I would like for all sympathetic white people to try to shut up more and point to what the black people are saying, because frankly, they are better at it.
MLK was more unpopular than BLM.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/04/04/martin-luther-king-jr-50-years-assassination-donald-trump-disapproval-column/482242002/
"It's pretty obvious that the massive downturn among Republicans is due largely to Fox News and its cronies."
No, it is not really obvious.
Drum's statement is just a variation of "My political beliefs are based on extensive research, but your beliefs are due to you being tricked or maybe you were bought."
The vast majority of Republicans do not watch Fox News. Average Fox daily viewership is a little over 2 million. I assume that OANN and NewsMax are even less. 65 million voted for Trump.
Also, BLM was protesting "tough on crime" laws that were enacted prior to when Fox News started in 1996.
Everyone needs to accept the fact that there are tens of millions of people who have a very different view on how government should work. Blaming nefarious actors is silly and counterproductive.