Until #Black Lives Matter Addresses the Elephant in the Living Room, Not Much Will Change

Sunday, June 7, 2020
By Paul Martin

Matt Agorist
TheFreeThoughtProject.com
June 7, 2020

On a daily basis, we hear about how if the #BlackLivesMatter movement really cared about black lives then they would say something about the black on black crime in poverty-stricken neighborhoods across the United States. This assertion comes from opponents of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and is usually made by police apologists who ignore the fact that police kill black men at a much higher rate than whites.

Yes, police kill more white people than black people. However, African-Americans make up only 13 percent of the population, yet they are the victims in 26 percent of all police shootings. That is nearly 3 times the rate of whites.

The outrage by the #Black Lives Matter movement is founded in statistical evidence which shows that the system inherently and with extreme bias disproportionately targets blacks.

For decades, black people have attempted to assert their rights and have achieved some pretty significant change in this country. However, the racial disparity among law enforcement and inside the judicial system is still glaring. When football players attempt to bring awareness to this injustice by peacefully kneeling on the sidelines they are told to shut up, stand up and get in line as the president even calls for their firing.

The Black Lives Matter movement focuses on black lives because the rest of the country refuses to see the disparity — instead, telling them to shut up and that all lives matter.

The point of the movement is not to assert that black lives matter more than other lives. There is an implicit “too” on the end of the phrase. It is saying that black lives should also matter and the disparity should be acknowledged and changed. However, saying “all lives matter” is dismissing the very problems that the phrase is trying to draw attention to. Comedian Arthur Chu summed up this sentiment perfectly in a tweet, years ago.

Do people who change #BlackLivesMatter to #AllLivesMatter run thru a cancer fundraiser going “THERE ARE OTHER DISEASES TOO”

Yes, all lives do matter, but when you tell that to a black person asserting that their life matters too and is affected in an entirely different and unjust way, you look silly.

Those who go around chanting ‘All Lives Matter’, while many of them have good intentions, are clueless to the reasoning behind the #Black Lives Matter movement. They regurgitate the talking points of black on black violence because it’s convenient and confirms their bias but it does nothing to address systemic racism and the issues behind this black on black violence.

These two things: police killing black men and black men killing black men, are not mutually exclusive. They are closely tied together, and the reason they are tied together is something that the #BlackLivesMatter movement and its opponents continue to ignore.

America has a dirty secret, and that secret is that black lives do not matter; at least not to the state they don’t. Black on black violence in poor communities doesn’t even meet the Mother Jones standard for mass shootings, even in instances of a single person killing multiple individuals. Black lives lost to black lives are simply tallied up as numerical entries in crime statistics databases and nothing more is said. This is horrible.

The Rest…HERE

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