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?

@PlanDeRaccordement No, not true in the slightest. Just ask any slave living in Africa now and @Moonmelodies. I am an African woman and I know the history of slavery AND know about slaves living in Africa now. You are incorrect to say that 'many' of the enslaved people were slaves already. They might have been sold by slave traders, but they weren't slaves already. It's like human / sex traffickers of now. The vast majority were lured, kidnapped, sold or stolen. Till this day, in my exH's village, there is a path that everyone is forbidden from walking once it's sundown because of the 'spirits' that steals people.

Interesting how the impression that someone was a slave anyway before he was resold, colours your view completely.

I don't even know where to start in educating you on what you consider 'slavery' in Africa now. It seems you only know what you're read about and most of it is incorrect so please stop representing it as fact. I'm just going to leave it here. I'm no longer interested in engaging in defiant ignorance.

@mbosnz I'm unsure how how you came to this conclusion. We are very much on the same page on this matter

memememoi I hope you're not implying that I inferred that this life did not matter. Because it did. It was the only life he had. It's a precious life his mother gave birth to, that his father contributed to. His siblings shared.

This case has really upset me. Can you imagine going for a run and being hunted and murdered? It’s like a dystopian movie.

And then the murderers aren’t even arrested.

I don’t know how people can live in that environment.

This is so sad. We are a black family and live in the U.K. and my 12 year old son is set on going to the US for university and that scares me and I hope and pray he grows out of it.

Racism is rife in the U.K. as well but just more covert. You are routinely not included, dismissed, looked down upon and must be absolutely stellar and outstanding to progress.

You constantly feel that you are on the fringes of society that has closed its ranks around you. I am in a very senior role in the city and I have sat in meetings where white people- men and women can’t conceal their discomfort at my presence. I routinely despair but when you meet a whole person who gets it and is willing to learn and challenge their own beliefs it gives me some glimmer of hope. I don’t fear for myself- I am incredibly resilient, I grew up in west Africa and not here but I fear for my sons. I fear that even with a good education and all of that, that some people will never feel they are good enough.

To the ignorant posters on this thread, I get that it is deeply uncomfortable to contemplate that nice middle class and educated you could be prejudiced but you must critically shine the spotlight on yourself and your beliefs. Only then can we move forward as a society. It’s ok to be uncomfortable but please don’t dismiss what you do not understand and will never experience

@ anew exactly. I hate how racism to black people in the UK is also dismissed (Megan VS Kate, Raheem Sterling, Stormzy comment on racism existing UK but media made it seem as he said every person in the UK is racist. Also police brutality does happen in the UK but at a lower level than USA. Yesterday I saw a video of a guy who was not a criminal get tasered in front of his child?! Not to mention stop and search also. From my experience, it affects people of colour. They are stopped just for looking 'suspicious' or fitting a certain mould.

Also I hate when people try and counter and say "when black people kill black people you don't care." The issue is this when black people black people 99 percent of the time they will get jail and a very long sentence. But when it is a white person they are treated differently just look at the Amber Guyger case if it was roles reversed the black man would have got life in jail. Look how someone like Dylan Roofe was treated by the police. He was given McDonald's when he was arrested.

It really isn't very far away.

It certainly isn't. And those suggesting it's kind of ok because at least we don't have guns really have no idea what it's like to face racism be it overt, or casual racism, every day of your life and seriously underestimates how it can affect someone.

@YinMnBlue, what a fucking world that you have to do that. I hope one day it can change. Nobody should have to prepare their kids in that way.

Yanbu op. I saw this on the news recently. Its fucking horrible. Quite shocked by some of the responses on MN. Thought we were a more enlightened bunch.

Honestly my heart breaks for humanity. We are not as evolved as we think. I mean the prime minister of this country wrote a column and described women in Hijab as post boxes and the US has an openly racist and misogynistic president!

I think judging someone purely based on the colour of their skin says something about your intelligence as a person and I just can’t believe that some posters are trying to blame the victim. Even in death, a black person can’t get empathy. It’s disturbing on so many levels

YANBU!

It's hard to ignore all the racist, ignorant, offensive 'All Lives Matter' posts which come after. OP these I assume are just white people not wanting to engage. Or aren't capable of critical thinking, in my opinion. Try and rise above them.

Every time, they come along. As they always do.

@GeorgianaD

The thing is - I think that it is bad.

But there are also a million other awful things going on in the world

Why don't people in the UK stop racism here. There is white supremacy every where that I look in the UK.

So why do we condemn the USA, when we let so much racism go on in the UK.

This is the generation where white people really need to look at themselves

The phrase All lives matter is technically correct but missing two words. All lives SHOULD matter EQUALLY.
Slavery in any form is abhorrent. One person should never be able to own another, whether that be a husband owning a wife or a white woman having an enslaved maid.
Personally, I think fortunes built on slavery should be returned as aid to the countries most affected. Companies like HSBC, Barings, Imperial tobacco, Lloyds of London all grew from slavery. Perhaps they should be funding anti-malarial and AIDS management programmes in sub Saharan Africa? Our recession will be nothing compared to the poverty of others.
Until inequality is addressed, there will be continued violence among the most disaffected. Emily Wilding Davison died in a violent death because she knew life treated her and other women unfairly; the way to reduce violence is by building a more just Global and national society.

YANBU OP, but then MN has always had a blind spot when it comes to racism. Anyone arguing the US and UK doesn’t have significant and deep-rooted problems with racism is either ignorant or wilfully blind.

It’s interesting the crossover in posters who post “all lives matter” and “NAMALT”.

Anamaria14, I started this thread about a heinous lynching of a black man by 2 white men and still had people try to defend the indefensible. They refuse to acknowledge that race played any part in it. Imagine trying to get them to admit that racism in the UK is also a massive problem.

They are part of the problem.

I hate the phrase All Lives Matter. It's used mostly as a response to Black Lives Matter to minimise the plight of the black and wider BAME population. If a group starts a campaign to highlight a grievance they have, or persecution/discrimination they believe they are being subjected to, surely the human and morally right thing to do is to listen to them and try to understand? Not just dismiss them out of hand with a put down implying that they are nothing special.

I am not so sure 'all lives matter' is said to dismiss black lives. I think it might often be said because it is also a nod to other races and cultures that suffer a similar fate and for the same reasons. Muslim communities will almost certainly echo those of black ones, as will Indian... the list is long!
They all share the same root cause. Racism. I know Islam is a religion, but race and religion become one in the minds of many racists.

I dont think every utterance of 'all lives matter' comes from a bad place or dismissive view.

@RockLock I know it was bad, but it is one case. There are so many millions of other problems going on in the world.

I am not going to be able to fix the deep rooted racism in the southern states in the USA. They need to instigate change there, themselves.

I like to think things will change, but honestly I don't think they will unless we took extreme and probably controversial measures. I'd be happy to carry them out though on the racist scum bags.

It's true that all lives matter - of course it is, and I don't think anyone is arguing differently. But to use it as a counterpoint to try and shut down those highlighting the awful prejudice faced by many in our society is to totally miss the point.

It's like going to a women's protest against rape and the trafficking of prostituted women and saying "but men matter too".

How can you be so tone deaf and privileged as to not understand what problems other people face, and that if you are living in the US or UK and if you are white and they are not then they will almost certainly be far greater than your own. I'm not a huge fan of this sentence, but sometimes people need to sit down and listen.

It's "when is straight pride day / white history month / international men's day" all over again.

If I may paraphrase Friends, EVERY DAY IS INTERNATIONAL MENS DAY / STRAIGHT PRIDE.

I dont think every utterance of 'all lives matter' comes from a bad place or dismissive view.

Funny how it mostly shows up when discussing the murder,abuse and discrimination of black people, don't you think?

That's because it's used to shut down discussions, not as a nod to other discriminated races.

OP wrote a post about a black man being killed in cold blood. Do you honestly believe the replies she got were a nod to other discriminated against races?

I dont know the motives of other posters.
I do know that when I read about something like this, it acts as a wider reminder about racism in general. The same lines of thinking in two American white men who see a black man as a threat and killing as a justified reaction is the same line of thinking as two blokes in a British pub moaning about the number of Asians in the area, or think it's funny to mock the waiters in an Indian restaurant.
I cannot be alone in that thought process.
'All lives matter' doesn't have to be dismissive. It may well be used by some that way, but not all.

To be frank, if hearing about this case doesnt make folks consider the casual and overt racism and prejudice in their own communities against a number of minority groups, then what would?

We do not know the full events leading up to the killing, we don't know for what purpose the video was being recorded - nor why they held onto it for so long

By the accused own admission, they saw a black man running, they THOUGHT he was guilty of something so armed themselves and went to confront him as civilians. They went after him. What else do you need to know?

Words exist within contexts. You cannot ignore those contexts.

Yes, of course everyone’s life is or should be equally important. As a belief, separated from any societal context, that’s a fine idea. The specific phrase “All Lives Matter” has been adopted by white supremacist groups and is a known racist dog whistle. You cannot ignore that context.

It’s like those American protestors using signs from Auschwitz. You could argue that “work sets us free” is a perfectly normal, harmless thing to say which is relevant to the situation. But writing it in German is a very intentional act to invoke Nazism and has a set of meanings and contexts that go beyond the dictionary definition of those few words.

Of course there’s space for a nuanced conversation about how different forms of racism apply and interact. I’m right in the middle of organising a co-existence event aimed at examining anti-black and anti-Asian racism and how they differ and intersect, for example looking at how umbrella terms like BAME cause harm, and how white supremacy pits different minority groups against each other. There are many nuances, of course there are.

But let’s get real. When people use a specific catchphrase invented by/heavily associated by white supremacists, it’s not because they are concerned that Sinophibia is being overlooked by the binary nature of contemporary racism discourse! That phrase is a racist dog whistle, pure and simple.