wart57 wrote:I don't know what I could have or would have been able to make of my life had my community constantly told me everyone was against me and I have no hope of ever achieving anything because of the color of my skin.
Slavery ended 150 years ago, amirite? Black people have totally gotten a fair shake since then. It's all in their heads.
As long as we continue to view minorities as some separate segment of society to be marginalized in general and disproportionately targeted by law enforcement, things are never getting better. We are all americans. We live in the richest country on earth and still have large swaths of the population living in poverty while a handful of individuals get obscenely wealthy. You would be amazed at what having a living wage readily available through legitimate means can do for someone.
I never said blacks have gotten a fair shake since then. But in the last 50 years or so, there have been program after program designed to give the black community more and better access to higher education, I still think there is not enough importance put on education in The U.S. More money needs to be put in to inner city schools and schools in general. Education is the only way we can end this cycle of violence and poverty.
But also, hard work needs to be praised too. I had to work 3 jobs to pay for College. Not many people of any ethnicity are willing to put in the work and time I did to get an education, nor are they willing to put in the 60 to 80 hr work weeks I routinely did when I was working my way up in my career.
If you want to get somewhere in life, you have to work for it, don't expect someone to come in and give you a high paying job just because you were born, you have to put in the time and effort to get there.
Isn't unemployment among young black men like 25%? Keep in mind unemployment measures people actively looking for work. There just aren't enough jobs for even the people who go to school and want to work. Then they have other challenges of poverty, like can their parents feed them decent meals and get them to school, afford extracurriculars, etc? A lot of this is just being poor in general.
Another thing is, in a country where so many jobs are going to be automated, what are all of us going to do? Even if you manage to get that entry level job, you may have to work 100 hours a week if you want to move up. Competition will be fierce. There just won't be many big opportunities to move up. We are already seeing this. I don't know but at some point I hope we recognize that a huge benefit of technology is that we *shouldn't* have to work as hard as we used to for the same level of pay. This is a good thing. We need to get comfortable with the idea that this means helping a lot of poor people, and a lot of them are black or other minority. I'm not suggesting we throw free money at them, just give them an opportunity to make a livable wage in return for a fair amount of work.
GeddyWrox wrote:That's fine. But if we keep making up excuses as to why we shouldn't listen, or why it isn't our problem, it's just going to keep getting worse.
What is being said?
I'll answer my own question. After looking around for an easy answer on google, I had to go to their website, and even that didn't have a clear cut mission statement or message. But, in the article of how they formed after the Trayvon Martin shooting, I did find this which I'm guess is their message.
When we say Black Lives Matter, we are broadening the conversation around state violence to include all of the ways in which Black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state. We are talking about the ways in which Black lives are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity. How Black poverty and genocide is state violence. How 2.8 million Black people are locked in cages in this country is state violence. How Black women bearing the burden of a relentless assault on our children and our families is state violence. How Black queer and trans folks bear a unique burden from a hetero-patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously fetishizes us and profits off of us, and that is state violence. How 500,000 Black people in the US are undocumented immigrants and relegated to the shadows. How Black girls are used as negotiating chips during times of conflict and war. How Black folks living with disabilities and different abilities bear the burden of state sponsored Darwinian experiments that attempt to squeeze us into boxes of normality defined by white supremacy, and that is state violence.
cardinalkarp wrote:
I'm sorry, but that mission statement/message is terrible.
They kind of remind me of Occupy Wall Street in that they have an issue that is legit, but they are struggling to make their point and spread their message let alone make any meaningful changes.
cardinalkarp wrote:
I'm sorry, but that mission statement/message is terrible.
They kind of remind me of Occupy Wall Street in that they have an issue that is legit, but they are struggling to make their point and spread their message let alone make any meaningful changes.
THAT is what I meant about listening. There are a million voices screaming for help. It's hard to hear a concise message because the movement is so young, but there IS a valid message. As a 40 year old white male, I didn't understand this until very recently. I am just trying to help people understand that there is something terribly wrong in our society. I don't claim to speak for the movement, or to even know exactly what it means to be black in America in 2015. But I am standing up to say, what can I do to help!?!
cardinalkarp wrote:
I'm sorry, but that mission statement/message is terrible.
Not to disagree with your general point (questioning its effectiveness), but this isn't a mission statement, but a manifesto. Political and artistic manifestos have their own rhetorical conventions and purposes. The BlackLivesMatter manifesto has all the basic features: criticizing current social conditions, making utopian assertions, and marking the movement as part of a political avant-garde. And the writers are also linking the movement to prior cultural nationalist movements, such as the Black Power and Black Arts movements.
This is more on the personal side of the tragedy about young Jamyla and the senseless loss. As the father of a 9-year old, my heart hurts for her family. Maybe it's been stated here in this thread already, but the DeWitt family is paying for the funeral costs. Such a great gesture. This picture, if true, really hit me, too. Supposedly, it is of the police officer and family/friends of Jamyla after she passed. The caption I saw with it said that this was the officer that was first on the scene and holding Jamyla as she passed.
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