Is the Black Lives Matter Movement Biased?

I wouldn't say that police being shot and killed is as big of an issue as you're saying it is, because that might just be the right-wing media speaking. Only a few dozen police each year get shot and killed (sadly, the nature of the job puts people in that risk). I haven't seen any evidence of that rate increasing since 2014.

 

TLR? A reactionary regressive racist organisation.

Technically, every movement group is biased. So I find the question a tad redundant. "Are they a force for good?" would be more comprehensible and important, imo.

I think they're doing a lot of harm. I have little more to add than what Paul Joseph Watson said recently. The entire interview included.

 

I was in NYC at the time when someone killed two police officers and made a manifesto stating he was going to go out killing them because they kill us etc.... The media really is horrible in a sense they report these shocking stories that are rare but it effects the way people view a majority of people, and all for ratings sake.

 

I mean like

but yea what I've noticed is a lot of colored people getting in tense situations with the law

you don't see any white boys nearly as much as colored people on tv, I don't know why. But some of the cases for like trayvon martin were unjust. Taking someone's life in my opinion if they had no weapon should mean that person should go to jail. If you have a weapon and I don't and you kill me that should be punishable with a long/life sentence. It really doesn't matter because taking someone's life is not acceptable in any shape or form.

honestly we're all equal, but I'm not going to be that #alllivesmatter guy. Some races have more stereotypes than others, which leads to these kinds of things happening

I'm not going to take sides on anything because everybody's opinion matters.

@Kazarkas 2 but you lowkey seem like a redneck that despises black people lmao smh

 

Very far from a redneck that despises black people. I dislike ignorant people in the Black Lives Matter movement.

 

Their name is "black lives matter", and when someone makes the very valid claim that ALL lives matter, they get offended, so yeah... I think they're just a tad biased.

 

I wonder what a black person thinks... are there any black people on meepcraft?

 

"Is black lives matter biased?

Black lives matter

Black lives matter

Black lives matter

 

People point out that there aren't riots for white people getting unlawfully shot by cops, but those cops are generally indicted while cops that kill blacks are not.

 

But black lives DO matter! Racism is just a product of pure selfishness and a very small portion of Fascism. When white people first saw that black people, they saw that they were defenceless and that they could be put to "good" use. Black Culture has evolved over the past few hundreds of years, pieces of old black culture still exist today. But unfortunately, the culture has taken some rather dark turns over the years, gaining a reputation with drugs and murders. But what white people don't understand is that white people can become addicted to substances and kill people just as well as blacks can. I truly feel sad for this since not all black people do drugs and murder people. Some can live good lives and live the American Dream. It really is terrible what society has become.

 

Please cite a source for that information.

 

I'm sorry? Did you fact check before you made this thread?

Here's just last year:
(x)

• Police killed at least 102 unarmed black people in 2015, nearly twice each week.
• Nearly 1 in 3 black people killed by police in 2015 were identified as unarmed, though the actual number is likely higher due to underreporting
• 37% of unarmed people killed by police were black in 2015 despite black people being only 13% of the U.S. population
• Only 10 of the 102 cases in 2015 where an unarmed black person was killed by police resulted in officer(s) being charged with a crime, and only 2 of these deaths (Matthew Ajibade and Eric Harris) resulted in convictions of officers involved. Only 1 of 2 officers convicted for their involvement in Matthew Ajibade's death received jail time. He was sentenced to 1 year in jail and allowed to serve this time exclusively on weekends. Deputy Bates, who killed Eric Harris, will be sentenced May 31.

Young black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police officers in 2015, according to the findings of a Guardian study that recorded a final tally of 1,134 deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers this year. Despite making up only 2% of the total US population, African American males between the ages of 15 and 34 comprised more than 15% of all deaths logged this year by an ongoing investigation into the use of deadly force by police. Their rate of police-involved deaths was five times higher than for white men of the same age. (x)

Not only are blacks disproportionately targeted, they rarely get any justice. Here's just a few.

Tamir Rice
Last year, Loehmann, a rookie on the Cleveland police force, shot Tamir, a 12-year-old boy playing with a toy gun in a park. This week, a grand jury declined to indict Loehmann and Garmback, the other officer who responded to the scene. “It would be irresponsible and unreasonable if law required a police officer to wait and see if the gun was real,” said Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty.

Jason Harrison
Dallas police shot and killed Harrison, who was schizophrenic, in June 2014, seconds after they told him to drop a screwdriver he was holding. Harrison, 39, was killed in front of his mother, who claimed she had earlier requested help bringing Harrison to a hospital. In April, a Texas grand jury decided not to indict the officers involved in the case.

Jerame Reid
New Jersey police shot and killed Reid during a traffic stop in 2014, after he got out of the car with his hands up. Officers repeatedly told him not to move, and noted there was a gun in Reid’s car. In a video of the incident, Reid can be heard saying “I ain’t got no reason to reach for nothing” before he is shot. A New Jersey grand jurydecided in August not to indict the officers.

Abdul Kamal
New Jersey police officers shot Kamal 13 times during an encounter in November 2013. Kamal, 30, was unarmed. Prosecutors said he’d had his hand in his pocket and was threatening to shoot, but he was not carrying a gun. In February, a grand jury chose not to indict three officers involved.

Nicholas Thomas
In March, an officer with the Smyrna Police Department in Georgia shot Thomas, a mechanic, in the back. Police said Thomas, 23, was driving quickly around a building, and they feared he put them at risk for “serious bodily injury or death.” A grand jury ruled in July that the shooting was justified.

Jeremy Lett
In February, David Stith, a police officer in Tallahassee, Florida, shot and killed an unarmed Lett, 28, who matched the description of a robbery suspect. A grand jury decided the killing was justified, accepting Stith’s claims that Lett had struggled with him physically and that he had tried unsuccessfully to use a stun gun on Lett. Florida State Attorney Willie Meggs praised the decision.


Often, the police officers do not get convicted or sentenced. Delores Jones-Brown, a law professor and director of the Center on Race, Crime, and Statistics at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, has identified dozens of black men and women who have died at the hands of police going back as far as 1994. She notes that while these incidents happen regularly, it often takes a high-profile case, such as Brown's, to bring other recent incidents to national attention.

"Unfortunately, the patterns that we've been seeing recently are consistent: The police don't show as much care when they are handling incidents that involve young black men and women, and so they do shoot and kill," says Jones-Brown, a former assistant prosecutor in Monmouth County, New Jersey. "And then for whatever reason, juries and prosecutor's offices are much less likely to indict or convict." (x)

USA Today reported that on average there were 96 cases of a white police officer killing a black person each year between 2006 and 2012, based on justifiable homicides reported to the FBI by local police. But the FBI's justifiable homicides database paints only a partial picture—accounting for cases in which an officer killed a felon. It does not necessarily include cases involving victims like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and others who were unarmed when confronted by police.

On black-on-black violence:

BLM is fighting the systematic oppression of black people in our society fueled by racism and prejudice. The "minuscule amount of cases" that you're referring to are modern lynchings that have increased in frequency over time and have had little to no repercussions for. If the BLM movement wasn't bringing attention to these cases, they would never be covered. What's worse, a majority of the violence is by cops, who are quite literally meant to protect us.

Wow I'm so glad you brought this up!

District Funding, by Racial Composition and Poverty Level


Black dots represent districts with no white students and white represents districts with 100 percent white students. (David Mosenkis)
“If you color code the districts based on their racial composition you see this very stark breakdown. At any given poverty level, districts that have a higher proportion of white students get substantially higher funding than districts that have more minority students.” That means that no matter how rich or poor the district in question, funding gaps existed solely based on the racial composition of the school. Just the increased presence of minority students actually deflated a district’s funding level. “The ones that have a few more students of color get lower funding than the ones that are 100 percent or 95 percent white,” Mosenkis said. (x)

Recently in the news Detroit covered how their schools conditions are being blatantly ignored. (x)


"The deplorable conditions in our schools have created a serious environmental and educational crisis," says DFT Interim President Ivy Bailey. "We refuse to stand by while teachers, school support staff and students are exposed to conditions that one might expect in a Third World country, not the United States of America." (x)

Where's this money you're speaking of?

there's a system in place preventing black folks from leaving this cycle, and this is what BLM is trying to get rid of.

Putting race where it doesn't belong??? It IS racially biased, that's the core issue. Additionally, people wouldn't still be speaking about this if it weren't for BLM. Many more cases of violence wouldn't be brought to public eye if it weren't for BLM. It's a movement to keep the conversation going, rather than ignoring the problem after a big case happens. Here's some accomplishments of BLM from last year (x):

1. Black Lives Matter leaders met with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Democratic presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders individually met with Black Lives Matter activists this year to discuss policing reform and racial injustice. The meetings marked significant moments which helped recognize the movement as a national political force. Both Clinton and Sanders spoke candidly about race and planned agendas to combat mass incarceration and criminal justice issues, which disproportionately affect black lives. In a separate meeting in November, mothers of slain black teens — including Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Tamir Rice and Michael Brown — met with Hillary Clinton to discuss gun reform in America.

2. The Say Her Name Campaign raised awareness about police violence against black women.
Black women activists across the country led a national campaign this year to fight for the recognition and respect all black women deserve but don’t always receive.For so long, the concerns for their treatment and safety have been neglected — as are the names of black women and girls who fell victim to many of the same issues that affect our black men and boys. The Say Her Name campaign, which was launched by several community organizations and gained major momentum earlier this year, changed that. Activists fought to include black women and girls as part of the national conversation around both racial and gender inequality.

3. Mizzou student protests lead to university president’s resignation.
In November, black student activists at the University of Missouri rallied together to protest the racial issues that they claimed had plagued their campus for years. More than 30 black football players refused to return the football field because they were fed up with the casual, everyday forms of racism they said they faced. Days later, faculty, students and state lawmakers called for the university’s president, Tim Wolfe, to leave. One student, Jonathan Butler, courageously started a hunger strike to protest the actions of the school’s president. Wolfe promptly resigned, signaling a significant moment for student-led activism and the fight for racial equality.

4. Campus racism protests forced schools to reckon with their racial history.
The resignation of the former Mizzou president Tim Wolfe catalyzed a wave of campus racism protests at schools across the country. Black students everywhere spoke out about the casual racism they experience at school and forced faculty to take a deeper look at their concerns and the racial history on their respective campuses including those at Harvard, Brown, Yale and elsewhere. Protests were held, demands were made and some students were successful like at Georgetown where students successfully got administrators to rename buildings that once honored slaveowners.

5. Activists protested the Confederate flag and fought for its removal from public spaces.
On July 10, the confederate battle flag — which has always stood as a symbol of white supremacy and racism — was removed from the South Carolina statehouse. One activist in particular, Bree Newsome, scaled the pole outside of the statehouse and temporarily removed the flag in a powerful display of protest that she said was done “in defiance of the oppression that continues against black people in the southern United States.” As a result, petitions and protests popped up everywhereas activists demanded the removal of the flag from other public spaces. In one big victory, in October, students at Ole Miss University voted to remove the flag from their campus — their demand was later upheld.

6. The issues of the black trans community became widely recognized.
The danger and disrespect transgender people face is part of an ongoing and difficult journey — and one that certainly does not escape trans people of color. Thanks to activists like Cherno Biko, Laverne Cox and Janet Mock, the voices of people of color in the trans community have been amplified. Mock brought national recognition to 17 tragic murders of trans women of color when she read aloud the names of these victims during a live broadcast on MSNBC in August. Black trans activists also joined forces with Black Lives Matter movement this year to ensure that all black lives matter.

7. Black students at the University of California prompted the school to pull out $30 million from prison investments.
During this year’s fall school semester, black students at the University of California rallied together to protest the university’s controversial $30 million investment into private prisons. On Friday, the school dropped the deal after meeting with students from the university’s Afrikan Black Coalition and listening to their demands. In a detailed letter written on Nov. 30, the student group wrote that the investments were “ethically embarrassing” and that private prisons turn “black, brown and immigrant bodies into profit under the guise of rehabilitation.”

8. The road where Sandra was stopped by police was renamed in her honor.
Two months after Sandra Bland was found dead in her jail cell, local residents rallied together to demand her legacy live on. Bland died in police custody three days after she was arrested for a traffic violation in Waller County, Texas. Her death was ruled a suicide, but her family disputed the findings and have since filed a wrongful-death suit. In August, local protesters rallied together and marched to the city council building to demand the road where Bland was pulled over be renamed in her honor. The request was approved and the road, originally named University Boulevard, was changed to Sandra Bland Parkway.

9. Activists launched Campaign Zero to help combat police violence.
In August, key leaders of the black lives matter movement came together to create Campaign Zero, a project that aims to combat cop violence by introducing a comprehensive list of proposals for police reform. The campaign digs deep into ways police — both on the state and federal level — can reduce their racial bias, undergo better training and wear body cameras at all times to help prevent police violence against black Americans.

10. Black musicians banded together for a benefit concert around racial inequality.
Many musicians have used their voices for much more than music. Some like John Legend and Pharrell have effectively used their talents and platforms to speak out — and sing — about the racial injustices that plague the black community. In November, some of music’s biggest and vocal stars teamed up for a one-night benefit concert on the A&E Network titled, “Shining a Light: A Concert for Progress on Race in America.” Through the power of performance, the black voices that graced the stage that night aimed to highlight how “the uncomfortable truth racial inequality and bias still impact our society.”

11. Activists launched the Police Union Contract Project to help ‘check the police.’
Activists have been keeping busy this year to provide independent platforms to “check the police,” which is exactly what the Police Union Contract project aims to do. The project, which launched in December and was founded by four key black lives matter leaders. It aims to take a detailed look at police contracts and how they fail to hold cops accountable. The platform is part of the movement’s Campaign Zero project and helps to tackle the broader, blistering issue of police violence against black Americans.

They started the conversation and are keeping us talking about this injustice, and real reform is being done both politically and socially. They need to keep talking - they need to keep with "No justice, no peace" because of all the times it has been forgotten. Here's a brief history (x) :

To think that the movement isn't doing anything is just ignorant of you. They've done so much and continue to work to improve the social, economic, and political standings of all black americans.

Also on police being targeted skaros said it best:

hoo boy
here's an analogy, it's not mine, but it's the go-to to make people understand why all lives matter is wrong.

AGGRESSIVELY POINTS @ THIS!!! Also, you don't see black people starting riots because their spots team lost? I'm just saying.

Anyways, I wrote a lot but black lives matter means a lot to me and I'm proud to be a part of it. Stay woke.

 

Alright I wasn't saying this wasn't true, I was just saying that a lot of the anger comes from the lack of indictments.

 

Two words: Double standards

 

Wow, this post was very educational, and I'm glad you feel so strongly about this movement.

 

BLM is one of the more atrocious movements I've ever seen in the United States. It's a group polarized and lead by some of the most hypocritical regressive people ever to grace the United States. I'd suggest finding a different group to affiliate with to fight "systemic" racism.

 

But it's not??? Do you know any of the leaders of BLM ??? How is anything they're saying or doing regressive? And I SUPER appreciate the """systematic"" racism. )

 

Let me explain.

First I would like to say that I admire your spirit, you provide good statistics and explanations of your arguments. First time I've ever been able to have a rational conversation with someone who identifies as a BLM activist. (I've had dozens)

Before I respond to your first post, let explain my position. Racism exists, and there are racist police officers. However these scattered examples do not represent the idea that racism exists systematically in the United States.

These statistics mean nothing. There is no link given that the numbers you presented resulted from systemic racism. There are many other contributing factors. You say it is disproportionate that 37% of unarmed people killed by police were black, I agree. It is also disproportionate that 13% of the population commits the most murders, and that blacks are three times more likely to commit a crime than any other race. Naturally when blacks are having more encounters with police, more arrests and conflicts emerge.

Let's first establish The Guardian's study found that 206 white people were killed by police relative to 100 black people in 2016 so far, and in 2015 the rate was still the same. Where you find your problem with this is in the difference of population. Again we must look at the rate in which black people engage in crime.

-Homicide: Despite accounting for 13% of the United States population, blacks commit the majority of homicides.

-Robbery: Despite accounting for 13% of the United States population, blacks commit 8 times more robberies than the white majority.

-Carjacking: Despite accounting for 13% of the United States population, blacks commit the majority of carjackings.

And the list goes on.

Considering blacks commit a majority of many major crimes, it is therefore logical that they will feature far more than whites in any negative interactions with the police. Yet despite this, according the The Guardians study that you cited, whites are killed by police more than any other racial group.

I may respond to the rest of your arguments in the near future. (I will edit the post). I just got super lazy because I'm tired and want to sleep.

Don't misunderstand what I'm trying to say here. There are problems of racism in our country today, however I don't see any examples of that being implemented across the country in a systemic manner. I believe that in an overzealous attempt to fix our system BLM has incited anger and hate across the country.

Those around me that affiliate themselves with the movement only work to create more conflict between the black community and law enforcement. A friend of mine's cousin was shot and killed by a white police officer while robbing a convenient store in 2014. His animosity towards cops increased immensely after this. He made sure that every time he saw a cop he'd exclaim some profane remark or throw up an obscene gesture. He proudly affiliates with BLM with so many others like him. Until reading your post, I had never come across a BLM activist that was at all rational, respectful, or intelligent. Many of these people (especially in university) are nothing but entitled pretentious snobs who want to jump on the social justice train and fight the "oppressors".

The reasons I put words like "oppressors" and "systematic" in quotation marks is because I believe these words often misrepresent what is actually happening in our country. By doing so, these movements and people are only making the problem worse by shifting the blame to a sometimes imaginary source and masking the problem.

I'll probably expand on this when I wake up.

 

Could someone please explain to me what exactly the BLM stands for? What bills have they been behind and whatnot. I've never really bothered to research it as it's never been relevant to me.

 

Nice counterarguments. However I'd like to point out that that is a separate issue, with debated sources. The most agreeable take was the following:

"A question that isn't being considered is why black culture seems to glorify crime and violence. If we skip over and disregard the idea that blacks are inherently more violent (and I hope we can do so without argument), we must look at external factors that are unique to the development of black culture; poverty is one of these factors, but we also must look at ones that do not affect other minority communities, at least, not in the same way.

Many other minority communities have been able to keep the qualities, values, and traditions they kept in their home country, but blacks, due to slavery, essentially had to begin developing their own sense of culture and identity distinct from whatever they might have had in their home countries. As this entirely new culture developed, it was still held under immense pressure by the various methods of oppression in American history, such as difficulty achieving citizenship and the basic rights excluded as a result, segregation, and general institutional racism, both historic and current.

With all these factors unique to the black community, it was as if they were, and in cases, continue to be outcasts in the only society they know and as a result, honest living has been difficult to achieve, at least, more so than whites at the time. Following the model of strain theory, (using crime as a means of achieving some form of success, usually monetary), crime, violence, and drug use became prevalent in many urban black communities.

While I don't entirely disagree that movement from within the black community is necessary to change their alleged culture of violence, I firmly believe that once we see more agents of opportunity being ushered into inner city communities (like better schools, social programs, and improved infrastructure), we will begin to see these impoverished communities going through proper channels in order to achieve success, and not resorting to drugs and gangs as a means of income or protection. The "culture of violence" problem will essentially be resolved on its own, as other social issues are advanced upon."

This points out that the crimes quoted are done as a way to achieve success when you've been given a drastically unfair starting point, and are jumping hurdles while your white counterpart is running a clear track. Why follow all the rules when they're set against you?

BLM wants us to recognize the concrete historical and policy reasons we have this kind of segregated poverty, it's at the foundation of why we see these ghettos and crime statistics. It completely ties together. For instance, cops aren't called in the ghetto because they're not trusted.

In the case of your friend, I agree with their anger. Their cousin was killed by a police officer, and they have a right to be angry about that. Yes that person was committing a crime, but was that crime worthy of a death sentence? My first post covered this - police officers take far less care when the perp is black, and are more likely to take that person's life, unproportionately. With the current system, they're allowed to do so, as they face no criminal charges. To quote DeRay, we need to update the laws so police officers can be held accountable for their actions.