Monday, August 24, 2015

 

There's Something Wrong With the Black Lives Matter Movement

All human lives matter. That's the driving force behind pro-life groups. It's the bedrock principle of healthy human civilizations. So there is nothing wrong with the idea that black lives matter as a subset of all human lives matter. If there is a 'more' at the end of that sentence which is unpronounced, then we have a problem.

Here is Leonard Pitts Jr. in the Miami Herald this past weekend, trying but failing to keep the 'more' silent. For him, the concept that all lives matter is "moral cowardice". I don't think so, but I'm willing to be convinced.
Those words have risen as a kind of counter to “Black lives matter,” the movement that coalesced in response to recent killings and woundings of unarmed African Americans by assailants — usually police officers — who often go unpunished.
I don't think there is any "usually" about it; the movement, such as it is, is only about black men killed by white police officers. And the police officers he's thinking about but not mentioning go unpunished because they didn't commit a crime. But when black lives matter more, the criminal code doesn't matter. Pitts is criticizing Gov. Huckabee pointing out what I'm pointing out, which I believe most rational people would agree with, all lives matter equally. Pitts is having none of it.
Then he makes a hugely stupid analogy.
Imagine for a moment that you broke your left wrist. In excruciating pain, you rush to the emergency room for treatment only to run into a doctor who insists on examining not just your mangled left wrist, but your uninjured right wrist, rib cage, femur, fibula, sacrum, humerus, phalanges, the whole bag of bones that is you. You say, “Doc, it’s just my left wrist that hurts.” And she says, “Hey, all bones matter.”
If you understand why that remark would be factual, yet also, fatuous, silly, patronizing and off point, then you should understand why “All lives matter” is the same. It’s not about “elevating some lives” any more than it would be about elevating some bones. Rather, it’s about treating where it hurts.
But let's go with the general idea you need to spend your efforts and concern on the things that are broken, that need immediate attention--treating where it hurts. So black on black murder absolutely dwarfs the few white cop on black homicides. Is it black lives matter more if a white is the shooter?
Pitts says that police violence is disproportionate in the black community. I'm not surprised because police have to become involved in the disproportionate amount of murders and assaults members of the black community rain down on other members of the black community. That blacks are the cause of their problems with the police, white or black, is something that just does not compute with Pitts and his ilk. There is something or someone else to blame, always, no matter how distant or absurd.
To treat where it hurts, one must first acknowledge that it still hurts, something conservatives often find hard to do because it gives the lie to their self-congratulatory balloon juice about how this country has overcome its founding sin.
But haven't we paid for doing what every other nation on Earth did at the time, own slaves, by the .6 million American dead in the Civil War? Not enough, Pitts apparently thinks. Haven't we paid for it with the $22 Trillion of the Great Society programs? Not enough. Pitts apparently thinks. Haven't we actually made some progress with race relations in the past 100 years? I'm thinking of the actual scandal it was for Republican President Teddy Roosevelt just to have George Washington Carver over to the White House for dinner; and now millions and millions of white voters have placed a black man as the resident of the White House. Twice. Meaningless, Pitts apparently thinks.

Pitts does admit that something good came out of the horror in the Charleston church. But it's not the wonderful grace and forgiveness shown by the families of the victims (something I'm not a good enough Christian to do) but rather the agreement by some whites that black lives matter more.

For a few hundred years Democrats here owned slaves, as was common throughout the world since humans first banded together. After Republicans freed the slaves, the Democrats kept the black community, largely in the South but elsewhere as well, second class for nearly a hundred years. By the early 60s, there was indeed a huge wrong to right. I am not convinced that 50 years after the '64 Civil Rights Act, there is such a huge wrong to right. Pitts disagrees, but he is not convincing about his misplaced outrage.

And I haven't even mentioned the strange mass Stockholm syndrome that has caused the black community in America to embrace their former (and current) oppressors, the Democrats. Pitts is as blind to that as he appears to be blind to the immediate and more pressing hurt to his community. Hint: It's not the police. He's still taking the easy route of alibi.

UPDATE: Most of my fellow ethnics agree with me and Huckabee and even 64% of blacks disagree that 'all lives matter' is the immoral standard of cowards. They too agree with me and with Huckabee and disagree with the obtuse and disagreeable Mr. Pitts.

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Comments:
Hi Roger, hope you are well. Can't believe you would even chime in on this topic, but hey, I guess that is what I always liked about you: bravery. I guess the thing that irked me about your argument is that progress from a very low point doesn't buy you much. "I don't use a belt to beat my kids anymore, only my hands. That's progress!"

Anyway, the reason I'm writing was to drop you a link on something I found that might interest you both from a professional and geographical standpoint. I assume you know the players.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-25/denver-police-arrest-jury-nullification-activist-passing-out-informational-pamphlets

Also, if you don't know zerohedge, you should. One of the best in the business.

Oh by the way, Looks like I will be right: Obama will double the public debt over his 8 years, not triple it as you predicted.

Watch the markets, hold on to your hat, and say Hi to the troops for me.

Mike
 
You are right about the doubling of the debt but that means he's overseen the borrowing of more money than all the rest of the presidents combined. Not exactly an enviable record.

I'll look into zero hedge. I actually have some money now to loose.

We're thinking about a trip to New Orleans and I thought, since I was last there in 1961, that when I was there they still had whites only drinking fountains. I do believe the Jim Crow Democrat dominion in the south was very horrible. But there has indeed been progress. Real progress, not just relative progress.

Isn't there some sort of mutual discrimination in the Czech Republic between Bohemians and Moravians? I seem to remember something like that. If so then ethnic hatred can exist anywhere, right?

I've been assuming through this that it's Mike from Praha. Hope you and your family are fine. Still remember our dinner together with great fondness.
 
Yes, it was nice blog.
 
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