To anyone who counteracts with ‘All Lives Matter’..

[MyChemicalRomancee]

And are against any protesting and this not being ‘your problem’ because you are white/in the UK etc. - please watch this
www.instagram.com/tv/CAtRsHjJtgg/?igshid=zsymfn3661c2

I’ve thankfully not heard anyone stupid enough to spout such nonsense. This should be everyone’s fight.

There have been a few threads here recently about it, I'm sure one of them was after Ahmaud Arbery was murdered, can you believe? I can't find it now so seems like it was deleted, thankfully.

It's just pure ignorance and is a huge part of the problem. I'm utterly embarrassed for anyone who can't understand why the Black Lives Matter movement even exists in the first place. There are just no excuses to be so blind to what's happening.

It’s maybe not my place to say, but I’m truly sorry for the racism and hatred and stupid little counter arguments being thought up to try and minimise the struggle people of colour are facing.

A man lost his life purely because of the colour of his skin and that’s not a world anyone should have to live in.

BLACK LIVES MATTER
hi i've just come from arguing with an idiot on FB I'm READY FOR MORE COME AT ME

No one was saying “straight pride” until we had gay pride.
No one was calling themselves a meninists until we had feminists.
No one was saying “all lives matter” until people started saying “black lives matter”.

No one said “what about white history month” before we had black history month.

People who spout all lives matter are no different to people doing the ‘okay’ hand gesture, holocausy deniers, EDL members and the list goes on.

But then I’m a brown man, so I need to be put in my place.

Surely it's the job of white people to try and educate themselves and try and understand where the anger and exasperation comes from, not the job of black people to have to yet again explain everything to us.

Spot on. White people who criticise black people for not explaining racism to them gently and patiently enough are part of the problem.

There are always All lives matter NAMALT types. There are always lots of issues and perspectives to everything, but we need to prioritise. We can worry about the minutiae later. Right now there are people dying.

People who spout all lives matter are no different to people doing the ‘okay’ hand gesture

What's bad about the okay hand gesture? I've only seen it in photographs, one of my friends used to do it all the time. I didn't know it had any negative connotations.

@SarahTancredi I've checked my post and no where did I say it was down to anyone in particular to educate white people? The comment was aimed at people who had commented on these threads.

@nameoflame

People who spout all lives matter are no different to people doing the ‘okay’ hand gesture

What's bad about the okay hand gesture? I've only seen it in photographs, one of my friends used to do it all the time. I didn't know it had any negative connotations.

It’s a white supremacist gesture, if you do it with your right hand (palm facing you), you’ll notice your hand makes a W and a P. White Power.

Thanks for the reply Simon. I had no idea.

Thank you @SimonJT - I was finding it hard to picture at first.

"All lives matter" is a really useful phrase.

It immediately identifies the Plausible Racist.

Ignorance has no colour.

That breast cancer analogy is a good one.

I was trying to explain to DH yesterday about what black parents have to teach their children (about surviving encounters with the police). He was absolutely horrified, he honestly had no idea. I said it was because he had never needed to learn it, and now he knows just how deep this all goes, maybe he could have a less hostile view of those who are so angry about it that they are resorting to violence.
I'll show him the film too, thanks to OP for posting it here.

Simon - I never knew that either. I hope I haven’t unwittingly offended anyone in the past.

All Lives Matter people are just deliberately missing the point.

Still don’t understand the ok gesture though. What is the ok gesture ? This 👌 ?

I’m slightly wary of us borrowing all these vehicles from the US when we have our own race issues here and potentially more powerful ways of talking about this that connect more with our UK history and experience. Black Lives Matter - the organisation in the US - seeks to ‘disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family’ which I think will come as a surprise to the black families I know here who are happily living in nuclear families. They also make a few other dubious statements that many of us - black or white - wouldn’t sign up to. It seems a shame to let the importance of the message be disrupted by extremists who deny racism but also by a few people within the movement who are pushing an agenda that goes far beyond what most people are comfortable with.

Not intending to derail. I agree with you OP.

The ok hand gesture is used in makaton/bristish sign language. Why has it suddenly become associated with white power?

@Sometimeswinning

The ok hand gesture is used in makaton/bristish sign language. Why has it suddenly become associated with white power?

Okay in BSL is making an O with your thumb and all your fingers (think making a binocular with your hand) then pointing forward with you index and middle finger in a scissor position. I prefer fine as it’s like pulling a cracker with your own thumbs.

That’s my thought. Connotations from a completely different society get passported in here as if they mean the same here. I’ve seen the same applied to watermelons which seems ludicrous in a UK context.

Ah Thankyou @simonjt I stand corrected! It's been appropriated though, surely, by white power groups?

I keep seeing people saying this

Funnily enough, white people are saying it

Yes all lives matter, but at the moment we are protesting over the needless murder of one black man by the police

@Sometimeswinning

Ah Thankyou *@simonjt* I stand corrected! It's been appropriated though, surely, by white power groups?

I only know as my son is hearing impaired, although my BSL still isn’t great.

It’s used as it does look like a W and P each finger on the W also refers to the three Ks. It actually started as a joke, but white supremecy groups took it on a few years ago.

Still trying to make it say WP and I cant see either letter. I realise anyone who wants to say ‘White Power’ with their hands is by definition an idiot but it really seems a bit of a stretch to allocate offensiveness to the fact of ordinary people making the ok gesture in the normal way.

See