Why are black people protesting?

I keep reading in the news that black college kids are protesting all over the country but I can't for the life of me find out why. I've read something about a shit swastika and a football team, but not an actual reason for the mass protests. News stories always just say it's about racism or something vague like that, but not what set all the whole thing off.

What the fuck is going on? Someone mind shedding some light on the whole situation?

 

[Space_Dandy]

Why should a whole nation be punished over one isolated incident? Protesting in public places over this makes me lose sympathy for the cause.

We all encounter cruelty and discrimination at some point in life. Take action against those particular individuals. The rest of the world doesn't have to stop for you.

My mom's next door neighbor is Bosnian and Muslim and they said some derogatory remarks about us being Christian before. We didn't act self-entitled and cry to other people, just grow from it and avoid those people.

 

[Dudeofteenage]

Why should a whole nation be punished over one isolated incident? Protesting in public places over this makes me lose sympathy for the cause.

Do you really view protesting as 'punishing a nation'? Where should one protest if not in public? Inside an apartment?

I'm really glad that the whole Martin Luther King era was brought up, because a lot of the people here seem to be indirectly arguing that rather than organising public protests, King should have worked against segregation outside the public eye (however that would have worked).

As for the whole thing about Brown and Clark not being of sufficiently high character, I have difficulty thinking that, when the history of this era is written in a hundred years time, anybody is going to care about that.

 

[AnOminous]

As for the whole thing about Brown and Clark not being of sufficiently high character, I have difficulty thinking that, when the history of this era is written in a hundred years time, anybody is going to care about that.

It's not their character, though that is in fact relevant as well, but what they were doing at the moment they were shot. If the police were actually justified in using deadly force, no injustice occurred at all.

If you look at what all the witnesses said about the events concerning Michael Brown, what actually happened is not exactly clear, but the evidence that exists certainly would not have sustained a conviction of the officer. PBS put together a chart of it all.

If you are pushing a cause against unjustified police violence, the examples you choose should actually be examples of unjustified police violence.

 

[Marvin]

Stopping police injustice is a cause. BLM is a group. If that group becomes the face of the cause and has a habit of using cases like Michael Brown as examples of police brutality, they really could convince people that police brutality isn't as bad as they say.

Ah, see, that's where we disagree. Like, yeah, there are groups operating under the name do lots of stupid shit. But they picked a really great name. They picked a name that little old ladies and people who don't pay attention to groups (like me) can react to.

So, like, yeah, I know there are groups that call themselves BLM. They're generally run by kids who act like dumbasses. But if I see a pretty reasonable tweet using the hashtag, I have no reason to believe it's substantially connected to the (semi?) organized groups using the name. These people have just managed to barnacle themselves on a very useful name.

(Disclosure: I live in Baltimore. The most I've heard about organized BLM groups being dumbasses was this Mizzou nonsense (which is retarded) and them fucking with Bernie Sanders (also retarded). On the other hand, the unorganized uses of the hashtag seem to be pretty solid to me.)

 

[QI 541]

Ah, see, that's where we disagree. Like, yeah, there are groups operating under the name do lots of stupid shit. But they picked a really great name. They picked a name that little old ladies and people who don't pay attention to groups (like me) can react to.

Unfortunately, we live in the information age, so relying on the uninformed masses is gradually losing its effectiveness.

So, like, yeah, I know there are groups that call themselves BLM. They're generally run by kids who act like dumbasses. But if I see a pretty reasonable tweet using the hashtag, I have no reason to believe it's substantially connected to the (semi?) organized groups using the name. These people have just managed to barnacle themselves on a very useful name.

Agreed.
But choosing to use Michael Brown as their case was more than just a small group.

 

[Space_Dandy]

Do you really view protesting as 'punishing a nation'? Where should one protest if not in public? Inside an apartment?

I'm really glad that the whole Martin Luther King era was brought up, because a lot of the people here seem to be indirectly arguing that rather than organising public protests, King should have worked against segregation outside the public eye (however that would have worked).

As for the whole thing about Brown and Clark not being of sufficiently high character, I have difficulty thinking that, when the history of this era is written in a hundred years time, anybody is going to care about that.

Punish may be the wrong term, since I am not against public protesting. However, the issue that is being protested is an isolated incident that doesn't warrant such widespread protesting.

 

[StallChaser]

"Black lives matter" was a bad choice for a name, because it will automatically create the reaction "all lives matter", whether it's well-meaning or not. That creates a negative reaction right back. A name that was race neutral, or pointed to an objective goal like body cameras or having agencies outside the local police department/prosecutors to investigate police violence wouldn't have created that problem. "BLM" sets up a needless "us vs them" mentality.

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As far as the college protests, it's because they've been teaching a bunch of postmodern deconstruction and critical race theory, and they're teaching it as if it actually means something. Postmodern deconstruction is where you take something (the "text", it doesn't have to be literally text, it can be a movie, a game, real life, etc.), decide in advance whatever conclusion you want to have, and then take little bits and pieces out of context to support that conclusion. It means you can make anything say anything by taking pieces of the original text out of context, applying metaphors to make one thing mean something else, and so on. It's like playing the Kevin Bacon 6 degrees of separation game, going from one thing to the other in the least amount of steps possible. The technique is meant to just talk about the conclusion, and doesn't say anything meaningful about the original text(The student protesters/sjws miss this part for whatever reason). Anita Sarkeesian's videos do this (Bits and pieces of games are used not to talk about games, but about feminism. Only about feminism.). Critical race theory is doing the same thing with race.

So imagine a bunch of students taking this literally with every single aspect of their life. They're actively looking for racism, and they will find it. There's no way they won't, because that's the conclusion they're looking for. And then they try to get people fired who don't fix it fast enough, or use the wrong wording in an email. It's why a shit swastika, or some random idiot yelling a drive-by racial slur, or an email about halloween costumes can somehow become a Big Fucking Deal. Universities have hoisted themselves by their own petards by teaching this stuff as if it actually means something.

 

[AnOminous]

As far as the college protests, it's because they've been teaching a bunch of postmodern deconstruction and critical race theory, and they're teaching it as if it actually means something.

The problem with this bullshit is its fundamental aspect is the idea that pretty much everything is socially constructed and, therefore, nothing really means anything. Taken to its logical conclusion, it's essentially nihilism. So when they then tell you you should pay attention to them, why? Whatever you're saying is utterly meaningless, too. You might as well be a fascist or purely self-interested, because it's meaningless one way or the other.

After all, if everything is just socially constructed, why side with a tiny disadvantaged minority when there's nothing in it for me?

For activism of any sort to be meaningful, it has to be attached to actual values. If not universal values, then at least widely held values a broad cross-section of society agrees on.

 

[Dudeofteenage]

Ultimately I think that lots of people here just have an instinctive dislike of the idea of popular activism, especially popular activism against racism, and that your specific problems with BLM are secondary - whatever they'd done, it wouldn't be good enough for you.

Everybody points to King as an example of "how to do it" but the thing about King's movement is that it was geared towards changes that are widely accepted now, so it's not asking anybody who's alive today (outside of a tiny fringe) to reexamine their views about the society they live in. This, more than anything about his methods, is why King is seen as a "good" anti-racism activism while pretty much all contemporary anti-racism activits are seen as "bad" or at least "dumb".

When we are asked to reexamine our views, it's very easy to channel our reflexive discomfort into nitpicking. It obscures the actual issue at hand, which is excessive police violence.

 

[AnOminous]

Ultimately I think that lots of people here just have an instinctive dislike of the idea of popular activism, especially popular activism against racism, and that your specific problems with BLM are secondary - whatever they'd done, it wouldn't be good enough for you.

I not only approve of but have participated in popular activism, if by that you mean demonstrations and the like, both on campus and elsewhere. The current brand of activism, though, seems to be carried out by people who have forgotten the lessons of even recent history, have no fucking clue what they're doing and are, if anything, actually contributing to rolling back the accomplishments of the past.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

Ultimately I think that lots of people here just have an instinctive dislike of the idea of popular activism, especially popular activism against racism, and that your specific problems with BLM are secondary - whatever they'd done, it wouldn't be good enough for you.

Everybody points to King as an example of "how to do it" but the thing about King's movement is that it was geared towards changes that are widely accepted now, so it's not asking anybody who's alive today (outside of a tiny fringe) to reexamine their views about the society they live in. This, more than anything about his methods, is why King is seen as a "good" anti-racism activism while pretty much all contemporary anti-racism activits are seen as "bad" or at least "dumb".

When we are asked to reexamine our views, it's very easy to channel our reflexive discomfort into nitpicking. It obscures the actual issue at hand, which is excessive police violence.

What many don't realize is that King was an opponent of the Nation of Islam which was the contemporary #BlackLivesMatter

 

[MrTroll]

The problem with this movement, besides the obvious fact that it's largely a bunch of destructive, unemployable retards who just want an excuse to engage in mob behavior and get away with it being manipulated by a handful of affluent, media-savvy types who are angling for book deals and academic jobs as the self-appointed "leaders" (see also: Operation Wall Street), is that it's a national "solution" to a million local problems that can't be dealt with on a national level. Do they think the Justice Department or Congress can preemptively monitor every single police department and courtroom in the country for discriminatory practices?

 

[Marvin]

... it's a national "solution" to a million local problems that can't be dealt with on a national level. Do they think the Justice Department or Congress can preemptively monitor every single police department and courtroom in the country for discriminatory practices?

It wouldn't be unprecedented...

 

[MrTroll]

It wouldn't be unprecedented...

And yet, to hear today's would-be civil rights warriors tell it, things are barely better now in many parts of the country than they were 50 years ago, which proves my point: the scope of the federal government's ability to effectively address localized, hot-button issues is, in practice, much more limited than liberal activists want to admit. You can pass another dozen Civil Rights Acts but it's not going to forcibly change people's attitudes.

 

[AnOminous]

Do they think the Justice Department or Congress can preemptively monitor every single police department and courtroom in the country for discriminatory practices?

No, but they can certainly step in after the fact when shit occurs that makes it obvious that local authorities are violating federal civil rights law, which is why federal civil rights laws were passed in the first place.

 

[Marvin]

And yet, to hear today's would-be civil rights warriors tell it, things are barely better now in many parts of the country than they were 50 years ago, which proves my point: the scope of the federal government's ability to effectively address localized, hot-button issues is, in practice, much more limited than liberal activists want to admit. You can pass another dozen Civil Rights Acts but it's not going to forcibly change people's attitudes.

I disagree with their portrayal of the situation. These are people who take microaggressions seriously. By their estimate, we'll always, forever be on the precipice of a race war, no matter how much things improve.

I see this as largely a bureaucratic problem, not a cultural one. I don't think people's attitudes need changing. Like, I think most Americans agree that if a cop is clearly guilty of mistreating someone, they should be punished. The various bureaucracies in place make it hard to prosecute cops though.

I wouldn't necessarily advocate for an immediate, top-down action from the federal government right now. But it's silly to think that they can't play any part at all. If your local government is failing to maintain even basic civil rights, it's reasonable for someone else to step in at some point.

 

[MrTroll]

No, but they can certainly step in after the fact when shit occurs that makes it obvious that local authorities are violating federal civil rights law, which is why federal civil rights laws were passed in the first place.

I wouldn't necessarily advocate for an immediate, top-down action from the federal government right now. But it's silly to think that they can't play any part at all. If your local government is failing to maintain even basic civil rights, it's reasonable for someone else to step in at some point.

But that does already happen, and the funny thing is, when they do step in, they usually side with the police anyway. The DoJ report on Ferguson for example spent like 10 pages explaining in depth why there are no legitimate grounds for charging Wilson with any civil rights violation.

I see this as largely a bureaucratic problem, not a cultural one. I don't think people's attitudes need changing. Like, I think most Americans agree that if a cop is clearly guilty of mistreating someone, they should be punished. The various bureaucracies in place make it hard to prosecute cops though.

The issue is really what constitutes mistreatment. Cops are given a lot of latitude because of how relatively dangerous their job is, and that's the case at virtually every level of government, which is why so few of the federal civil rights investigations of alleged police brutality or misconduct go anywhere.

 

[AnOminous]

And yet, to hear today's would-be civil rights warriors tell it, things are barely better now in many parts of the country than they were 50 years ago, which proves my point: the scope of the federal government's ability to effectively address localized, hot-button issues is, in practice, much more limited than liberal activists want to admit.

I think Americans in general are often unclear on exactly what the role of the federal government is, and that it is not a general police agency for the whole country. It's not unique to liberals.

But that does already happen, and the funny thing is, when they do step in, they usually side with the police anyway. The DoJ report on Ferguson for example spent like 10 pages explaining in depth why there are no legitimate grounds for charging Wilson with any civil rights violation.

No prosecution of Wilson could prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, whatever one's opinion of what actually happened. The witnesses were often in disagreement, but a majority of them witnessed a use of deadly force that was, arguably, justifiable.

This article has an excellent chart that breaks down the factual content of all the witness statements, and if you look at it, you can see why there is no way a jury would convict:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/newly-released-witness-testimony-tell-us-michael-brown-shooting/

 

[Linako 2.0]

in the end, it's because the protesters are delicate bitches who throw apeshit over a poop swatsika and instead of laughing and shaming them we are just enabling them.

 

[MrTroll]

I think Americans in general are often unclear on exactly what the role of the federal government is, and that it is not a general police agency for the whole country. It's not unique to liberals.

Well, when it comes to issues of civil rights, technically it is a general police agency for the whole country. But again, there's a natural tension between what the government has the legal authority to do and what it has the practical ability to do, and when people don't recognize that, it causes them to have unrealistic ideas of what their activism can accomplish. There are thousands of municipal police departments in the US and no federal effort will ever be enough to stamp out all racist or abusive police behavior, which is why I've been describing the problem as a local issue. If activists are serious about preventing police brutality, then they should be organizing locally and approaching municipal and state authorities about reasonable, achievable solutions. But as we've seen again and again, that's not what BLM is about.