For those of you that think ‘all lives matter’ heres a quick and easy explanation

[TeddyIsaHe]

MN can be extremely racist at times, most posters that have been here for a while will know this.

All lives can’t matter until black lives do. It’s something we ALL need to understand and I think this makes it very easy for people to grasp.

I've never thought about white privilege before because I've never had to. I get it now. The video of what happened to George Floyd horrified white people around the world. Give it a couple of weeks the majority will forget and move on to something else. Black people can't and won't forget. White people see it while black people live it. This is the difference.

I think it’s misguided to say ‘All Lives Matter’ in response to what is going on but, I think, in general, it’s clumsily coming from a place of good intent. They are trying not to make a difference between white and black people - that every life should be seen as equal, no matter the person’s skin colour. I think some people would be horrified if they thought it was being interpreted in the way suggested in the OP.

People say shit like "all lives matter" to wipe away a problem, to not have to engage with it, support it, address it or get angry about it.

It's just another way to shut people down.

No wonder people in America have been forced to take to the streets to shout "black lives matter". And what is the response? Tear gas and rubber bullets. The ultimate in shutting people down.

bumbleymummy I do see your point - you’re talking about the people responding with ‘all lives matter’ because they want to see everyone as equal, and people united.

But for me, this is not true. We are not (currently valued as) equal, so no lives matter until black lives matter.

BLM is really the civil rights movement of our time, because its attempting to address the fundamental inequality in our society: that Black lives are too often undervalued.

I also agree with bumbleymummy that some people use all lives matter as a way of expressing unity, and they are unknowingly ignorant. Others are just showing their true colours when they say it.

This is a few years old but I remember it as an eye opening read. It gives a tiny insight into how the system was stacked against POC from the south of the US, but also up to the north, and the effects that’s had today. I realised I knew absolutely nothing about what had happened after the Civil War:

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

@Xenia

I'm a black woman who was privately educated, abroad and here in the UK and even in a majority black country, still one of the few black faces. These are a few of the things I heard that I only started unpacking years later

-You arent like the other black people, you are okay, you are different
-[insert racist comment/joke/slur] oh but not you, it's the other ones
-being called racial slurs outright
-if you can say the n-word I can too, it shouldn't be in music if you
-abroad in an African country where I went to private school (in a 60% white, 40% black and Asian), being put in a dorm room along with another black girl and 3 white girls and those 3 sets of parents called to make a complaint about us being put in the same room and sharing the same facilities as their little darlings. You know why because it was assumed I was white due to having an "English" surname when most black people don't and we were literally separated by colour (in 2003, in a former British colony)
-Similar experiences as above in England
-Initiation (hazing) every year because I was a black

• my favourite "well you know money whites so you arent too black"

Despite my posh accent, things I have heard since
-Racial slurs
-Being given a written warning for daring to go to work with my hair in an afro (what the way my hair naturally grows out of my head?)

• had a job interview suspended for being black, literally her words after a very successful phone interview and shock upon seeing me "I'm just going to suspend the interview and not pretend I can hire you because you are foreign and we are bot allowed to hire foreigners, I'm usually good at picking out accents but I missdd this with you" (I'm British, and she said you spent time in x country- yes for work, literally insisted on showing her my passport but she wouldn't hear it.) Even DH didn't believe she was that brazen and struggled to believe it, I wish I made it up, but I reasoned it's probably because we were in such a rural part of the country that I didn't even bother.

Respectability politics is used to divide black people and dehumanize them

If white people spent as much energy on the mental gymnastics they use to justify racism and with the same derision, defensiveness and abhorrence they do being called racist. We wouldn't have a racism problem

@bumbleymummy

Comments like “all lives matter” and “I don’t see colour” are a problem still. We need to hear what BAME people are saying and not look at things through our own narrow experiences of life.

@BovaryX - so I made a mistake on him being a cop - but I was "bothered" enough to look up several other references in regards to this situation, and I am "bothered" enough to agree that Black Lives Matter.

What's your contribution?

Well said, Stop. However I still remain of the view that on a personal basis whether you are discriminated against because you are female or black or whatever getting a good education does help. It was only when the poorer part of our family started getting education in the 1870s and then my mother got to grammar school that they could get out of poverty in Sunderland etc. I agree that racism whether against the irish but even worse against people because of skin colour is a specific and difficult thing to stop.

Class is also used in the UK between white people too to divide them. I wouldn't ever justify racism. It is horrible.

The core religious ethos of many people is summed up in the Bible -
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."

Even for atheists that is a pretty good principle to follow.

I don't know if non-white people like whites commenting on racism threads but I think it's good if people of all kinds can discuss things and understand each other.

@ThumbWitchesAbroad

You can't even get the basic facts straight on the killing of Trayvon Martin. You haven't made a contribution to anything. Except fake news

People saying ‘all lives matter’ in response to this remind me of those that ask why there isn’t an international man’s day... or why we don’t have heterosexual marches!

I’ve never, ever considered myself racist (I’m white)
I get why it is totally insensitive to say ‘all lives matter’

But even I have been utterly heartbroken and disgusted at my own ignorance as to what has been and is going on. I would never have denied that racism exists - of course it does - but I had no idea as to the scale of it and how systemic it is. Even in the U.K. I feel I’ve been happily skipping along all this time assuming that racism is only prevalent amongst the incredibly stupid and that most people don’t hold these views and that black people (and people of other races too) are free to go about their daily lives and, on the whole, experience the same rights that I do.

How fucking wrong I was. I’m devastated.

How does it help though Xenia? I have a friend who moved from Nigeria at 16. He studied, has a Masters combined with an entrepreneurial spirit. He's now an extremely wealthy business owner who supports and sponsors young people to make opportunities available to them that would otherwise not be.

He picked me up from work one day to go for lunch and said, this will be a first, not getting stopped by the police because I'm driving a Porsche. My white presence legitimising him in the eyes of the police.

Maybe a better analogy is

Imagine your child was dying and you were talking about how special your child is and how much they are suffering and how hard you find it to watch. Then someone grabs the microphone and says

'Oh yes it must be so difficult, I do understand- only yesterday I found myself losing sleep over my child's cold. I so hate to see them suffer with a stuffed up nose and not being able to go out with their friends. So you see I do understand how you feel watching your child suffer'

We must work together to stop children suffering.

Yeah ok Bovary. Whatever.

@StopMurderingUs. I agree. I was having lunch at work (socially distanced) with our fruit and veg man who is African who told me if white people stopped with the talk and applied some action we could make a difference. He says the power to stop racism lies in white hands. I and several colleagues will be attending a protest in Edinburgh to show our support against racism and discrimination. All organisers have asked is that we wear a mask and stay 2 metres apart. Elijah has said it would mean the world to him if his colleagues turn up and stand shoulder to shoulder with him rather than us suddenly holding a door open for him to show we aren't racist he actually finds this patronising. I will be there. Racism is wrong. Yes all lives matter but for white people this is a given. For black people it is not. Black lives matter.

That's encouraging to hear Tonz

Still a bad analogy bovine. That's about competitive misery. It doesn't equate because the white race don't experience the level of misery that the black race does, purely because they are white.

I liken the situation to comments re the holocaust and that many Christians were killed too. Actually many dissenters were killed who happened to be Christian. They weren't killed purely because of their religion.

Non-white people?!!!! That’s like saying women are non-men. Ffs.

It doesn't matter what way people take being told they have white privilege, it's a generalisation and needs to stop. You can't tell anyone what they should or shouldn't be offended or annoyed by.

People see privileges as all different things. Some see money and education choices and chances as a privilege, others see good health and access to food as a privilege. People are different, everyone is their own person so people will see their privileges as different.

If people want to use white privilege as a term that white people generally do not suffer from racism and the privilege is that they do not face that plight, then call it that. Racial acceptance white privilege. Don't use a general term of white privilege.

All these 'you just don't get it'. I really do. Maybe you don't. You're not getting the fact that lumping a whole race into one category is wrong. Using bold and general terms is wrong.

Do I think it needs more attention than the BLM movement? Absolutely not, no where near but these shitty labels and terms being dished out need to stop for everyone.

And to the PP that said only 1% of judges in the UK are black, did I say they weren't? I said not EVERY white person will receive privileges in their life above that of a black person. They will of course not experience the stigma that a black person does as a majority so I just think we should have better terms to address issues and not be saying things like white privilege and using terms like BLM to address the racial issues in Amercia and other countries when in fact it doesn't actually include all black people because as I said above, no one seems to be protesting for all black people and their rights. No one is protesting for the basic right for a person to eat and drink, it gets ignored everyday and the biggest sufferers of that are black people in Africa.

It should be FWBLM. First world black lives matter or RVBLM. Racial victims black lives matter. The cause is not fighting for all black people to have equal rights at all because the majority (more than half) of black people in the world do not even have the basic right of food and water but people are ignorant to that as a majority. So how can you say you believe BLM when you only care that some of them do?

The more I read threads like this and spend time on social media, I become increasingly concerned that all people want is an echo chamber of thought where tolerance for challenge or debate is nonexistent. How can you hope to change minds and tackle this issue if you simply lay into anyone that you think is racist? Like it or not, it has been proven that almost all of us are subject to unconscious bias (and possibly some conscious bias) towards different groups of people. Some of this will stem from our upbringing, experiences or simply lack education/exposure, but castigating and shaming isn't the way to go if you want real change.

I truly believe we need to listen to both sides of this issue to really understand where everyone is coming from. We need to really hear POC to understand their experiences and how they are affected by racism. Perhaps just as importantly, we need to find a way that those with racist views can be effectively challenged and I don't think this can be done unless they feel heard and have their thoughts and feelings properly addressed. This may feel unpalatable to many who feel that racists don't deserve to be heard at all, but I struggle to say how else we can really achieve change? The alternative is we all just spend out time preaching to the converted in our little echo chamber, silencing dissenters and wondering why racism still permeates our society.

White privilege isn't about saying that life is easy for all white people. It's about saying that their life hasn't been made even harder purely because of the colour of their skin.

It doesn't matter what way people take being told they have white privilege, it's a generalisation and needs to stop.

I'm embarrassed for you yappity

@YappityYapYap have you actually listened to yourself?

It should be FWBLM. First world black lives matter or RVBLM. Racial victims black lives matter. The cause is not fighting for all black people to have equal rights at all because the majority (more than half) of black people in the world do not even have the basic right of food and water but people are ignorant to that as a majority. So how can you say you believe BLM when you only care that some of them do?

WTAF did I just read?!!