#BlueLivesMatter and #AllLivesMatter need to quit being obtuse about #BlackLivesMatter.
This post goes out to the dense folk. The intentionally slow-witted. The pigheaded pinheads. The pinheaded pigheads as well.
This demographic is filled with spite and they turned their intellect off so their brains won’t short-circuit. Deep thinkers they ain’t. Their mental activity happens at the shallow end of the pool. I’m just a white dude observing these folks’ exasperation from a distance. They look like they want to discredit Black Lives Matter while also not giving much thought to why Black Lives Matter exists. It appears that their goal is to stop all progress without listening to any of the grievances. Their cries of indignation seem to indicate that they are outraged about black-on-black crime. Here, I will offer my two cents in order to enlighten this group.
These folks say they love cops. But many don’t truly love cops. They love the idea of cops. To them, 911 is this magic number that functions as an extension of their bodies. In return for being able to wield this superpower, these folks feel duty-bound to bend their minds into pretzels rationalizing every incident of police brutality against BIPOC. The privileged dimwits will kickstart their brain cells and furiously rub them together coming up with weak excuses. And they’ll keep the weak excuses coming until the other side gets exhausted from dealing with overt stupidity. It took the filmed murder of George Floyd to quiet most of the superficial attempts to ‘splain away the violence. Yeah…the video disturbed the vast majority of humans. Which is a sign of being human.
But these people have begun to think that the protesters have had their fun and it all needs to start winding down. Yeah, yeah, they’re saying, George Floyd is dead and Ahmaud Arbery’s killers will face charges and Breonna Taylor’s killers should be arrested sooner or later and Elijah McClain’s murderers will be prosecuted—so the whole problem has gone away and everyone can go home. According to their turned-off minds, the police brutality issue has been resolved.
Now that it’s time to shut the protesters up, these people have brought out one of their old standby tactics: use black-on-black murder rates to redirect the conversation and cloud the issue.
Some ask, “So why isn’t Black Lives Matter protesting those murders—why do they only march when cops kill them?” Others bleat, “WhY dOEsN’t BLm pROtEst blAcK-on-BLacK cRiMe???!!!” In both cases, these people will conjure up as much empathy as they can conjure up as they converse. They do their best to really, really care about innocent people getting murdered in places like Chicago and Baltimore.
Nothing wrong with their words: the violence committed by black people against other black people is indeed awful. It occurs far too often. So many tragedies, ordinary civilians just wanting to live their lives. Children dying, elderly getting assaulted, random shootings—yes, all of this happens and it needs to stop.
Here is why Black Lives Matter protests don’t focus on black-on-black violence: organized demonstrations work against institutions, but they do nothing to help stop individual criminals. Marches disrupt a society’s everyday pace, which affects the institutions responsible for keeping that pace. Criminals don’t play a role in keeping the pace, police do. Criminals don’t make their living off of the taxpayers. Cops do. Cops are an instrument of the institution. Criminals aren’t. Police brutality is an institutional problem. Killers and drug dealers don’t live within the confines of society.
Police not only live within the confines of society, they get paid to protect society—and they kill the BIPOC who pay their salaries at higher rates than they kill whites. Overall, more Americans die at the hands of police; it’s an issue unique to this first-world country. So…one would think that the people trying to deflect would instead want to join the let’s-cut-down-on-unnecessary-deaths cause, right? But what do I know? I’m just a guy with revolutionary views like education should be more attainable and billionaires shouldn’t run the world.
Hypothetically, say an old black man gets gunned down by a drug dealer. What good would staging a protest do? And contrary to what Fox News pundits say, people are working to fight black-on-black crime. Instead of staging mass demonstrations, concerned citizens are conducting community outreach, running crisis intervention programs, pushing for educational reform and economic investment, coordinating with the varied efforts of religious groups—and this work is happening every day, all around the United States, in big cities, rural counties, and everywhere in between. Many of these people also identify with Black Lives Matter. Yes, it’s possible to support many efforts at once.
If those who disparage BLM feel up for it, they could jump in. Since they kvetch about it so much, why don’t they help? Many organizations are focused on improving the quality of life in lower-income areas. And their solutions address the problems more effectively than mass protests would. Guess what, BLM haters? These organizations could always use support.
The people who die at the hands of police also pay for the police. This is why people march. These historic protests will only continue until changes begin to happen.
No justice, no peace.
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Chris Maley 
So you mentioned that criminals do not live within the confines of law and therefore protests do not affect them. That they only work when they disrupt institutions. This is a false statement as protests work by disrupting the lives of citizens, who in turn disrupt institutions, either by hampering its ability to function by not having employees show up on time or at all for work. The effect of protests is angering the average person and having them do the work for them. When the average citizen shows indifference to their movement that’s when intimidation and shaming are started to either scare or force them into action. This is not social acceptence of a movement it’s intimidation. This is the ends justify the means mentality.
And yes, contrary to your statement you can protest black on black violence, and you can protest criminal on citizen violence. It can also be effective, here the institution is society, and don’t misunderstand society is an institution, it is defined as “a society or organization founded for a religious, educational, social, or similar purpose.” Also as ” an established law, practice, or custom.” Both apply. The reason these organizations target corporate or political institutions is because they are leveraging the occupations of those in charge to attempt to change legislation and statutes. Unfortunately the people that are committing these crimes as you mentioned are criminals and live outside of these laws, so in the legislation they are trying to get enabled is infact useless. They are hollow victories.
Be more honest in your writings and not as one sided if you are more than just propaganda. And just an FYI once you start with the insults it shows a lack of subjectivity and substance, and these were your leading statements.
Thanks for responding. I’ll address a few of your points. First things first: your first paragraph…you seem to be mixed up, confusing criminals and citizens. Criminals don’t hold protests, citizens hold protests. (But part of me wonders if you think that any protester is also a criminal, like you don’t think that a person who shows up to a protest has the same citizens’ rights as, say, a lily-white couple with a house in the ‘burbs and a white picket fence in front.) Your use of the word “false” doesn’t make sense, and what is this “employees not showing up for work” about? Are you taking about cops or other public employees…private-industry employees…who? Also, you could have said “average Fox News-watching, Breitbart-reading citizen” instead of “average citizen” and your statement would be more accurate. You make way too big of a leap by lumping in all people as “average” when you seem to be talking about conservative-leaning people like yourself.
Your second paragraph: again, you seem to be confusing criminals and citizens. I think you believe that people should not protest at all, they should not be allowed to gather in public in organized mass demonstrations. The Constitution allows this freedom. The end of this paragraph: “hollow victories” — what hollow victories? Organized demonstrations in the 1960s led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Union protests lead to changes in company policies. Far from “hollow victories.”
In terms of your use of the word “honest” — are you getting Fox News on me and saying that I’m not “fair and balanced”? Because if you are, you need to comprehend that Fox’ tactic of using that terminology is insidious in nature and the same pundits who abuse this term also do not listen to others’ viewpoints. If you are confused as to my feelings on racism and white supremacy, don’t be. Be clear that I hate it.
Overall though, you should look up the term “sealioning” because I think you’d find definitions of it to be enlightening. Are you a Ben Shapiro fan, by chance?
At what point did I say that criminals were protestors or citizens. What I said, and you can read it is that protests disrupt the lives of citizens. I also said that you mentioned that criminals live outside of society, these were mentioned in seperate and unrelated statements. And at no time did I equate protestors with criminals. Nice try but not quite.
Next you somehow jumped to the assumption that I equate people showing up at protests as not having citizens rights. Once again never said or eluded to.
And my use of falsenis perfectly justified if you actually read what I typed and don’t just jump from section to section trying to make assumptions instead of just reading what I typed.
You also equated lily-white-suburbinites as the “average citizen”? Where did get that from anything I typed. It wasn’t there expressly or implied.
I’m not even going to attempt to address the probably 10 other completely random things you typed and tried to attribute to my answer. But since my comment is the only one typed, I’m guessing this blog is more for you than the public, so type what ever fantasies you wish.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but maybe the issue here is that you don’t know how to articulate your thoughts very well. I read what you wrote and had to reread it a few times because you jump all over the place. Don’t put that part on my response, it was your post that prompted me to do that. Own it. Your writing has this habit of saying that my point is wrong, but you’re not very effective at saying why. In terms of what I interpreted from your words, you don’t get it but your hatred for these protesters is obvious, it comes out of your pores. It’s funny you got so torqued at my response, but I stand by it. The funny part about your whole approach is that you hate what I wrote, but you don’t want to say that, so you’re pulling out every trick in the book as a way of trying to discredit me. You need to understand that I write for a living, and the modern Right wing has gone ape-shit with this type of manipulative behavior: not just expressing one’s disagreement with a viewpoint (because with this post, admit it: you’re terrified of being called a racist) so you billionaire-fetishizers rub your brain cells together performing mental gymnastics as a way to shut the other person up, talking all over the place and making random points trying to be confusing on purpose. And in your case, it failed. You are an amateur at this, dude. Keep your day job. And admit it: you tried your gobbledygook-disguised-as-academic-mumbo-jumbo approach because you just didn’t want to say that you disagree with me.
Have you ever thought about taking a remedial writing class? It might help you get your point across better.