Friar Bijou wrote:
On you on-board with mine that being a racist hater and refusing to publicly acknowledge that fact is also pretty cowardly?
Sure. Where I have an issue is when a third party assumes a person or group is racist (perhaps merely because they fail to actively support a group like BLM), demands that they admit to their racism, and when they don't condemns them for it. IMO, it's a pretty unreasonable standard to try to apply.
Quote:
Put another way: Do you honestly think that of all the people who don't agree that "black lives matter" none of then are racist haters?
First off, let's clarify that I'm making a huge distinction between agreeing with the position and actions of the organization known as Black Lives Matter and agreeing with the statement that "black lives matter". Obviously, anyone who says that black lives don't matter is likely a racist of some form. But what we've seen is people who attempt to make the statement in the context of "all lives matter, and black lives are part of all lives, thus black lives matter" are labeled as racist because they're not just leaving it at the base statement. The implication is that they're attempting to deny the fact that black lives matter, when what they're actually doing is avoiding what appears to be an exclusionary statement that is itself racist in nature. If black lives matter in some way other than all other lives matter, then we're innately placing a different value on someone's life based on their skin color, which I would assume you would agree is racist by nature.
So ironically, an attempt to avoid a blatantly racist statement is in turn condemned for being an implied racist statement. Which perhaps says a whole lot about how ridiculous the entire issue of race has become.
Now, if we're assuming you were speaking of the organization Black Lives Matter, then of course not. In the same way that it would be unreasonable to assume that of all the people who like to visit Disneyland none of them are racist haters. Doesn't mean that I'm going to condemn Disney for catering to racist haters though. You can't reasonably apply the logic that way, or you'll conclude that any group, statement, position, etc is "racist" because some people who are members of said group, or make said statement, or hold said position happen to be racist as well. Which things you decide are racist become purely about which ones you apply this unfair standard to.
A far better approach is to avoid creating dual meaning terms and labels in the first place. Which is one of the reasons I have an issue with BLM. They appear to have done this intentionally, not to assist with the problem at hand (black lives being lost at greater rates than other groups), but to create conflict. Which, if your objective is to actually address the problem, is counter productive. Now, if your objective is to create more racially aligned discord within our society, then it's exactly the sort of thing you'd do. And if the results are any indication, they seem to be achieving it quite well.
Hence my problem.
Edited, Jul 18th 2016 3:34pm by gbaji