Re: What do you think of this video?
Ironcross, thank you for at least coming this far. We've had our differences, but in this, you seem to understand where things are at right now, and I respect you for that.
All lives do matter. That isn't the point right this instant, but of course they do. In a very big-picture sense, every life, regardless of race or gender or any other factor, is equal. But we're talking about specifics here, so all-lives-matter stuff is just distracting.
Accman, I do want to point out one more thing that you maybe haven't understood or internalized. Please don't conflate things I've been taught with things I believe. I make my own decisions, thanks kindly; I'm not just a parrot for the left, and I think very, very carefully about things before deciding whether or not I want to follow them. In other words, the fact that I am confronting you is not simply because I'm being told to or expected to; I'm making a choice of my own free will to call out hypocrisy where I see it.
Now, you ask why we are still being asked to make reparations for stuff that happened a long time ago? That's because it's still happening. Obviously I cannot personally be held accountable for something my great-great-great-grandfather said or did; that action is not my fault or my responsibility. However, racism is still alive and well in the world. Please, if you haven't, watch the video I linked to; you will see the sorts of things that have happened, and in some cases are still happening, to people of colour. If all of the atrocities they were citing had happened two whole centuries ago, then maybe you'd have a point. But the problem is that while racism is nowhere near as ugly as it once was, it's still happening. Now it's on a more systemic level. for instance, it might be decided that a freeway should be built through an urban area largely made up of a minority population. And who makes this decision? Certainly not the people who live there. If you go and look at the stats on things like this, you'll realize just how amazing it is that black neighbourhoods are so often targeted. If you've ever heard of the "ghetto", this was something that was done deliberately in order to get blacks to live together. These areas were often in less-than-ideal places in cities, with less access to things like amenities and resources and public transport. The people who lived there often had to work long hours for lower wages, and the police have historically been more heavy-handed in dealing with people of colour. Of course, in some areas, police just stayed away unless they absolutely had to get involved - this was before there was widespread violence and risk to police in some communities, so please don't bark up that tree - which meant that black people often had to find ways to solve their own problems instead of being able to rely on the interdiction of law enforcement. Black-on-black violence has been one of the unfortunate consequences of this plan, because when you put a bunch of disadvantaged, targeted, frustrated people together, there's bound to be some unrest and some actions you'd rather not see. I'm not going to pretend that gang violence, and blacks killing blacks, aren't happening, because that would be silly. What I'm going to ask you to do is to remember that violence against black people, perpetrated by predominantly white people, is still happening on both a personal and systemic level.
You also ought to look into the concept of transgenerational trauma. If racism, genocide, large-scale religious persecution or other such things affected previous generations of your family, it may mean that you grew up without family members you otherwise would have been able to count on. A father, a brother, a mother, an uncle, whatever the case may be. Obviously this happens to white folks as well to some degree, but it's pretty prevalent in black communities, just to name one. I bet there are a lot of black families who could talk to you at great length about the people in their family who have been hurt, spat on, abused and even killed by the system which holds power over them. When they struggled, they had fewer resources to call upon. Financial help was less available. Mental health problems often went unreported because reporting them often meant things like unwarranted CPS involvement, suspicion of drug use, or worse. So some of tese folks grew up knowing that their ancestors, and even in some cases their immediate family, have been chewed up and mangled by the system, and you'd better believe that makes them angry. And again, what is there for them to do? They have had no real say in how the power structure developed.
Does this mean that all of their violence is 100% okay, and we should just hand-wave it? No, of course not. But have some fucking compassion. If all you care about is how awful the riots are, you are missing the point, because you seem prepared to argue over and over again about it, but to my knowledge, do not seem prepared to confront the fact that the system which empowers and grants unseen and unearned privilege to whites has been predicated upon the suppression, to one degree or another, of everybody else.
All this stuff been going on for hundreds of years, and it's only really begun to ease up in the last fifty years or so. Even then, the battle is not done. Not by a long shot. One line from the video really resonated with me. "I'm really glad that most black people want equality, and not revenge". Because let me tell you something. If they wanted revenge, we would be drowning in a sea of blood.
Oh BTW? I agree a hundred percent about indigenous people. We've had a pretty awful history with them as well. Residential schools, the 60s scoop, human rights abuses...it's a long and terrible list. It's not only blacks who have received the dubious attention of the white ruling class, not by any means. But right now, black folks have the spotlight because of what happened. Change needs to happen. I promise you that folks like me have not forgotten that people of colour are not the only ones who need help.
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