Will black lives ever matter?

[RockLock]

So another killing of a black man Ahmaud Arbery by 2 white men (Father and son) in US. They nearly got away with it calling it a citizen arrest and self defence. Father was a retired policeman.

They followed him, armed with guns and shot him.

Prosecutors tried to cover it up until the video emerged.
Ahmaud’s crime? He was going for a jog.

Will black lives ever matter?

@SkinRash
Gregory McMichael told police he saw Mr Arbery and believed he resembled the suspect in a series of local break-ins.
Mr McMichael and his son armed themselves with a pistol and a shotgun and pursued Mr Arbery in a pick-up truck. Gregory McMichael told police he and his son said "stop, stop, we want to talk to you" and claims Mr Arbery then attacked his son.

By THEIR own admission they didn't know, they just THOUGHT he was suspect because he was -another direct quote- "hauling ass" . They ARMED themselves and then followed him. They stopped their car in HIS way, while still armed. One of them was out of the car ARMED.

In what world is that a reasonable , justified course of action? In what world civilians can grab guns and chase people they think are suspects? In what world two men arm themselves and get in someone's way just to have a "chat"?

He wasn't armed, he didn't go after them and as it turns out he wasn't running from a crime scene either. That's why people shouldn't take justice in their own hands, even when the "suspect" is black.

FFS Listen to the 911 call.

They said they did it because he was black.
They did it because he was a black man in their neighbourhood.

He was in shorts and a T-shirt. Clearly unarmed.

thats pretty much rascism against police officers by saying they are all the same then

There is a very deep problem with institutional institutional racism. in the South it's even worse.

No. I suspect the older man called in their suspicions, based on a black man moving at speed through a residential neighbourhood.

I suspect they both made an assumption and chose to be good guys, as the older man used to be when he worked in law enforcement.

I suspect, from the words on the 911 call, the son approached and accosted the presumed black thief and was unprepared for the presumed thief to resist him as he was armed, and the presumed thief was not.

The gun went off and the black man died.

At which point the official response was that 2 armed white men must have been acting in self defense when they followed and shot an unarmed black man.

The assumption adds insult to injury; adds a constitutional racism to that of the individuals.

What part of outnumbered, outgunned, guilty of nothing makes any part of that reasonable?

Short version, @SkinRash, you can't seem to differentiate between 'he was shot because he's black' and 'it's far more likely that a black person will die in this situation due to the circumstances'.

@SkinRash

Get real. Have you ever had a gun or weapon pointed at you? If you think the average person acts calmly and rationally in that situation, you're sorely mistaken.

You are not 'keeping an open mind', you are victim blaming to a preposterous degree.

I think you are largely forgetting that a person is not entitled to murder another person EVEN IF the latter is a burglar (which us not actually the case here).

Except they didn't follow to shoot him, he was asked to stop and rather than have a calm conversation about a local burglary he fought with them resulting in the gun going off twice.

Oh, come on. If you were out jogging and two rednecks followed you in a pickup, stopped and cut you off and told you to stop, you’d be happy to stop and have a nice calm conversation with them? I sure as shit wouldn’t, and I’m white. I’d try and get the fuck out of there as quickly as I could, which is what he did and one jumped him. I take it in this case, you’d still be up for that calm conversation? How absurd. Are you from Georgia, maybe this explains things?

If people are seriously suggesting he was gunned down in cold blood purely because he was black then that is ludicrous.

www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/09/aiyana-stanley-jones-detroit/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trayvon_Martin

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Stephon_Clark

www.vox.com/2016/7/6/12105380/alton-sterling-police-shooting-baton-rouge-louisiana

edition.cnn.com/2016/09/20/us/oklahoma-tulsa-police-shooting/index.html

No, you're right these things never happen

Some professions get a hard time, police being a prime example, and you get some horrible idiots spitting, swearing and worse at you...

But being black is from birth. It doesn't stop when you take off the uniform. You can escape the job, but not the colour. All of your life, someone will look at you with prejudiced eyes (whilst you live in a white dominated society).

It is horrific. I doubt equality will ever be reached. Unfortunately the world has limited resources and we are past the peak. Higher costs and a reduced standard in living will cause more inequality. We have middle class friends who like Trump, the economy has improved and they have prospered during his presidency.

Judging by some of the responses you've gotten on this thread, YANBU.

It's relevant, I believe, that this happened in Georgia. One of the states that operated segregation/apartheid until the 50s. You don't change such ingrained attitudes overnight, more's the pity. It will likely take generations.

Those dismissing the OP for claiming this is a race issue either do not have a clue about the problems in America, especially the southern states, or are the sort of people who would happily put on a pillow case and join a lynching.

TBH if I'm fucking raging at bullshit like this(and other comments on here) , I can't even imagine how members of the BAME community must feel.

Fuck me, this thread. Now I’m sure there’s a lot more troll posters here than I thought. It seems America really hasn’t moved on at all in 50 years.

It’s very easy to invent wild hypotheticals and throw around stuff like “ohhh but did he have a criminal record? Did he have a history of behaving in a sketchy way? Did he have a history of jumping around with a clown nose screaming that Country and Western sucks and Starbucks is overrated?? Did he practically force those poor white men to confront him??”

Yet on the flip side, you reject out of hand the opposite: Did the two murderers have a history of behaving in a racially abusive way? Do they have a history of expressing racist views? Do they have a history of violence? Do they have criminal records? We don’t know the “facts” of the two murderers’ past either, yet you’re not willing to consider that they may be known violent thugs with a history of racist abuse.

Why is the innocent man’s (hypothetical) past being dragged over to justify “not making judgements about why a man was murdered till we know all the facts” (implying there possibly could be some background that could possibly justify murder??) but not doing the same to actual murderers?

It isn't about two idiots setting out to kill a random black man...

it's about them thinking 'ah, a black burglar, let's gear up and teach them a lesson'. If it had been a car theft and the suspect white, would they have gone looking? I suspect not.
That is where the racism lies... 'those damn ni....' (you know the word)', and this was their excuse to go out and teach one of them that they can't get away with that in a WHITE neighbourhood...

Trayvon Martin linked above.

This will go to trial, and they will get off.

It sickens me Mockers, his poor family, he was barely a child.

I gave my white son 'the talk' because he was a bit vulnerable, and going out with friends who were more streetwise than kind. I was worried.

I've been in the car with kids who were very alarmed and hostile at the sight of a passing police car, and realised they weren't being brought up with the ol' 'ask a policeman' mantra.

All lives are precious and it's outrageous that we have to shout about it in order to protect black lives.

I understand the reasons for the 'black lives matter' slogan. I wonder whether 'all lives matter' might be a stronger and more unifying slogan. It's appalling that we have to specify black lives matter, as if there is any question of that!

It's scandalous that institutions and individuals still fail to value black lives.

It’s so sad that so many black people have to give the ‘talk’ to their young black boys.
The talk whereby they are told not to wear their hoodies up; be aware that the security guard in the local store may think that you are a shoplifting solely by dint of the fact that you are black; be aware that if you have a casual sexual relationship with a white woman make sure that she is sober , so that she doesn’t accuse you of rape.
I am white, but I have been told this my black friends, colleagues etc

Of course these are the sort of conversations any mother would have with their male child. However, the need for this conversation is more urgent when you are the mother of a black/ mixed son because of the possible ramifications.

I am dismayed by some of the casual racism displayed in this thread. The refusal to believe that black men can be killed for the
‘crime’ of being black . The ignorance and victim blaming is shocking to say the least.

@Havart agree with your post at 15:42

Some of these responses astound me , we have to stop innocent black men and women dying at the hands of ignorant people! It breaks my heart !!
I am dreading having to give my son due in a few months (who will be mixed , Jamaican/British) a talk about what he should do if he's ever stopped by the police for driving a nice car or even entering a shop when I wouldn't have to do that if he was white.
I am angry that when I enter a store with a friend who is black it is them that is profiled and followed not myself , it disgusts me.
I sometimes hate this world we live in

Somebody posted a video of the incident - it was horrific!

It's hard to tell from a short clip, so I may be wrong, but it didn't look as though they had even challenged him - just shot him.

Apparently they thought he was a burglar (because obviously a black man running has to be up to something - he can't possibly be out for a jog to get a bit of lockdown exercise), but it didn't seem to occur to them to convey their suspicions to the police - they decided to deal with it themselves.

I became aware of the situation 30 odd years ago. I was on a train, and the conductor (who was not white) was making a hash of sorting my change out. I realised he was waiting for the abuse, and was surprised when I started to joke with him.

What shocked me was on another day I might have been as grumpy as hell. It would have been nothing to do with his colour, but he would have assumed it was.

Earlier on in the thread there was a comment about the number of stop and searches of black youth v white youth. Correct me if I am wrong, but since the police have been forced to consider race in their stop and search, and the number of black stop and searches reduced, hasn't it lead to an increase in black on black crime? I don’t have an answer, but hasn’t this policy actually caused more harm to black youths?

I am not being goady- I am genuinely interested in people’s views. I am also quite happy to be corrected.

As for America. I am not sure that is solvable. Whilst American’s continue to insist on the right to bear arms, the slaughter will go on.

This Twitter account is well worth following.

twitter.com/Well_Regulated_

Nope... you asked a simple question and unsurprisingly one if the the first answers is "all lives matter" as if it's all people getting gunned down for existing...