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?

This made me really sad when I saw it. Imagine having to build that in to parenting.

It’s something every parent of a non-white child has to do.

The world we live in isn’t prohuman, it’s prowhite. All lives matter is bullshit, white lives have always mattered, non-white lives are always an after thought.

I’m not white, I’m subjected to stop and search on a fairly regular basis, I don’t have any white friends who have experienced stop and search. People with non-British sounding names are less likely to be shortlisted for interview. People who do not have white skin typically receive longer/harsher punishments for crime. People who are not white are more likely to be subjected to violence when outside their homes.

The UK voted for a proud racist.

The US voted for a proud racist.

The 'right to bear arms' law in America is crazy. People forget it's an antiquated law.

Yes, people are racist in the UK, but thank God, guns aren't legal. Can you imagine?!

YANBU . I would love for everyone born with the privilege of white skin to experience living in black skin for just one day.
America is full of ignorant red neck scum with guns.
How many white men get arrested or shot down for the crime of running? Anyone have some stats on this?

“Is there any country, who imported such huge numbers of African slaves, like the USA did?“

Yes. According to Slave Voyages, here are the number of slaves stolen from Africa by nation:

Portugal- 5,848,266
Britain- 3,259,441
France-1,381,404
Spain- 1,061,524
Netherlands- 554,336
USA-305,326
Denmark- 111,040
www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates

Of course, the USA did not exist before 1776, so most of the slaves brought there were originally brought by the British when it was a British colony.

Sorry, my last post made it seem like I condone racism, I do not!!!

Pinkginhelps

I agree with everything you say

I agree, but I also think that we need the BAME doctors and nurses too.

Sorry, I didn't make it clear - I was assuming that if we decided to shield all men from front line roles because of their increased risk, then we would do the same for those of BAME. So in effect the only workers would be white women. Which just wouldn't work.

44% of doctors and 25% of nurses in the UK are BAME. Good luck if they suddenly all disappeared!

Thanks for this. On double checking my figure of 27% was very out of date.

So 55% male, 44% BAME. Which means only around 25% of Doctors are white females. Probably fewer in hospitals, because of the increased likelihood of women to be in General Practice.

It is interesting to ask if those of BAME origin and men are both twice as likely to be severely ill, does that correspond to BAME men being 4 times more likely? And how does that compare with the risk of someone with BMI over 40, or taking immunosuppressant medication?

But this is probably a question for another thread.

In America especially there is still a long way to go.

It's not just Black, it's BAME in general.
Jews aren't Black, neither are Roma, but both get the same racism and yes murder, that is tried to be covered up, or lied about, to justify.
If anyone doesn't see this then they are either naive, or racist themselves and in need of educating themselves.

“How many white men get arrested or shot down for the crime of running? Anyone have some stats on this?”

This is a decent article about the stats of police brutality. It has one statement that I think has the information you’re looking for about chances of police killing you while unarmed:

“University of Nebraska at Omaha criminology professor Justin Nix examined in his 2017 study on police killings. Nix’s research, which Cesario cites often in his own study, also focuses on police shooting-killings in 2015, when police killed nearly twice as many white people that year (495) than they did black people (258). But 15 percent of the black people police killed that year were unarmed, compared with just 6 percent of white people who were unarmed when killed by police”
www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shootings-gun-violence-racial-bias-crime-data/595528/

@PlanDeRaccordement

Interesting link.

Isn't that the nationality of the traders who stole them, though, rather than of their eventual buyers? Just because the slave trader was British/Portuguese/Dutch doesn't mean the slave couldn't have ended up in the USA.

Wonder if there are stats anywhere which show where they mostly ended up?

I hope they do op. But sadly , I see otherwise.

Hearing and reading about white people experiencing racism too really pisses me off , it reminds me of when people are discussing violence against women and there's always a 'but what about the men' comment.

For context , I'm white. When I was a teen I overheard my employer referring to the white staff (me and one other girl) as 'those people'. This unpleasant experience was over 20 years ago and I still remember how hurt , shocked and bewildered I was. This happened to me ONCE in 40 years. Try hearing this (and much worse) on a daily basis and then white people can chip in with their what about us crap. It simply doesn't compare.

@Blessed2496 and @VladmirsPoutine. Totally agree with you.

When you have to sit your 11 year old child down and teach them what to do if they are stopped by the police on their way home from school, when you witness innocent black school children being stopped by the police 5 minutes after walking out of their school gates to go home, maybe you would understand. When you witness a black man with his infant child being tasered for trying to protect his child. Maybe you would understand. When every 4 stop and searches (in London) for every 1,000 White people, compared with 38 for every 1,000 Black people. Maybe if these figures were reversed, maybe you would understand. When you yourself are stopped when driving your car and asked how you could afford that car (maybe you would understand). Black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate. They account for just 13 percent of the U.S. population, but more than a quarter of police shooting victims. The disparity is even more pronounced among unarmed victims, of whom more than a third are black.

Of course all lives matter, but the data clearly shows Black lives quite sadly don't matter.

@Namechangervaver. Great book by the way.

@Moonmelodies

And your point is?

It's the actions they took before the shooting..getting guns and chasing him down. Why would you do that?!

YANBU. Racism is so bloody ingrained in some that, as in this case, a black man jogging, are knee jerk hard wired stupidity. The men had only one view of a mobile black man and, despite the call handler querying them, chose the act on their own prejudice and then lie to cover it up, once they realised what the son had done.

Other times, and in the opposite direction, someone mentions a business man who may be acting in a philanthropic manner, I s fanning the flames of a situation, maybe spreading misinformation, that benefits him financially, and the person highlighting it gets called racist, fascist because said business man happens to be black, Jewish, or Muslim, or American or any Other that may spring to mind.

In many ways we have lost something. The ability to see others as real people, maybe?

I don't get it. Can't understand the mindset. And am scared by the growing phenomenona of personal isolation, lack of critical thinking, culture of celebrity / popularity = self publicisation.

@Moonmelodies statistics overall show that you are more likely to be killed by someone you know. Therefore, if you live in a white community and amongst white people, you are more likely to be killed by a white person. If you live in a black community, you are more likely to be killed by a black person.

Your logic seems to suggest that because black people kill each other, it’s ok that white people kill them? Also, I assume you had to take the time to look that statistic up to what, absolve white people who murder black people, somehow?

White fragility is a hideous thing, and also a great book. Would suggest everyone (including BAME people) read it - it’s illuminating.

This isn't an isolated incident, it's the latest in a long list of innocent black people being murdered for no reason other than the colour of their skin
Here's another one www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50032290
How many more examples do people need?
How many white people have been shot simply for going about their daily business, or even just being in their own homes? Very very few I bet.
No YANBU OP. Rest in peace to this young man who had his life stolen from him. It really is horrific, and I don't see how people can be so quick to minimise it.

Yes, that is true. Some ships would fly a flag of a country that still allowed the slave trade specifically to smuggle slaves to colonies where slavery had been outlawed. Portuguese and British also supplied slaves to other countries colonies as middlemen. But this is a minority of voyages.

The website is great to see the big picture. Here is an essay that talks generally about where the slaves went and it was mostly to Portuguese Brazil and British Americas.
“Given the dominance of Portuguese and British slave traders, it is not surprising that Brazil and the British Americas received the most Africans, though both nations became adept at supplying foreign slave systems as well. Throughout the slave trade, more than seven out of every ten slaves went to these regions. The French Americas imported about half the slaves that the British did, with the majority going to Saint-Domingue.”
“Indeed, overall the United States absorbed only 5 percent of the slaves arriving in the Americas.”
www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/essays#interpretation/a-brief-overview-of-the-trans-atlantic-slave-trade/empire-and-slavery/4/en/

The first three replies to this thread are some of the most stupid I've seen in a long time.

@ilikemethewayiam I see your point completely as I’ve lived both in the UK and in England and definitely think day to day racism on the streets (in my experience) is a bigger issue in the US.

However what is it a huge issue in England is systematic racism. Mothers like @YinMnBlue across the country have to have conversations with their children who are stereotyped by police forces and targeted in ways that their white peers aren’t- a study was released last year saying that black people are 40 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched on the street. While it is a good thing that policemen/women in the UK aren’t as trigger happy as in the US so less people die from incidents like this, it is still inherently degrading that innocent people are forced to co-operate with police intervention when the only grounds for this is their race.

I recently read an article which stated that the Department for Education reports that black children are ‘three and a half times more likely to be excluded than all other children at primary, secondary and special schools. These are disparities that exist not because of any underlying propensity to cause trouble, but probably because educators perceive black children as fundamentally disruptive, hopeless, and inferior, regardless of what they do.’

BAME people even in today’s progressive society are consistently faced with people of authority (teachers, bosses, police figures) stereotyping them and forming opinions of them before they’ve even spoke. As white people, most of us have no understanding of what that’s like as we’ve simply never lived through it. One of my best friends grew up with the mantra from her mother that ‘you have to work twice as hard just to be half as good’ because of the racial bias black people face.

The fact that people are even debating whether racism exists on a public forum like this makes me feel sick. I am white, I have never been subjected to racism in my life but unlike some people on this thread I’m very glad I don’t use my position of privilege as a reason to ignore racism and deny what a huge issue it is.

Imagine if two armed black men chased down a young white man jogging through a park and shot him dead. And then said "Oh, but there was a police report of a white man burgling a house, and look, this man is white!! That's not racism! He fit the description perfectly!"

Do you think the police would say "well that seems conclusive to me, case closed! You fine gents are free to go, have a lovely day!"