Posted on Aug 1, 2015
What is your Interpretation of the Slogan "Black Lives Matter"?
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Posted in these groups: 
Law Enforcement
Racism
Law Enforcement Racism
Edited 9 y ago
Posted 9 y ago
Responses: 155
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initially I think it was a cry for awareness. Then it became a mantra for "instigating". Now the cry that "all lives matter" means so much more.
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In my opinion, i think the meaning behind the original message got lost: it's not "black lives matter", as much as they matter too or as well. I think the intent was to inform not just other races (white especially ), but also government agencies (esp. law enforcement ) that the black community shouldn't be treated as a disposable commodity. Acknowledged only when politicians need to increase their voter turn out or when they pander to the community for their own benefit. We all matter regardless of skin color or nationality and the sooner this country accepts its own diversity, the less need for slogans and rallys and riots.
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It is ratings tool for the media. A white police officer kills a few black people and no one talks about the black on black murders and rapes in cities like Chicago and Baltimore where the leadership are black Americans so back to the original question, no cares unless it fits into an agenda and black on black crime does not fit.
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SN Earl Robinson
SSG William M. and SPC Andrew Griffin. Why is everyone trying to talk about black on black crime? That has NO bearing on "OFFICERS of the LAW" killing unarmed black people. Trying to divert the issue to something totally unrelated is an attempt to justify those murders.
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SPC Andrew Griffin
SN Earl Robinson - The point is to not DIVERT the Attention! But the point he made is a very VALID one!
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Redundant. All lives matter.
Having said that, I think it's an important phrase right now. it serves as a reminder. It doesn't elevate black lives over another, but I think it's fair to say that there are large portions of the US where, unfortunately, black lives are not necessarily valued.
I think "Black Lives matter" serves as an important reminder in some parts of this country where everyone's common humanity is forgotten about, lost behind nationalistic and and racial fervor.
Having said that, I think it's an important phrase right now. it serves as a reminder. It doesn't elevate black lives over another, but I think it's fair to say that there are large portions of the US where, unfortunately, black lives are not necessarily valued.
I think "Black Lives matter" serves as an important reminder in some parts of this country where everyone's common humanity is forgotten about, lost behind nationalistic and and racial fervor.
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I feel that it is an activist movement to split our country apart using race as an issue. Those of us that have seen combat KNOW better because we can not be split by trivial things such as that because we are brothers and sisters bound by blood spilled by our family that knows no color, just Honor and Respect for one another.
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Imagine that you're sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don't get any. So you say "I should get my fair share." And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, "*everyone* should get their fair share." Now, that's a wonderful sentiment. Indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share also. However, dad's smart-ass comment just dismissed you and didn't solve the problem that you still haven't gotten any!
The problem is that the statement "I should get my fair share" had an implicit "too" at the end: "I should get my fair share, *too*, just like everyone else." But your dad's response treated your statement as though you meant "only I should get my fair share", which clearly was not your intention. As a result, his statement that "everyone should get their fair share," while true, only served to ignore the problem you were trying to point out.
That's the situation of the "black lives matter" movement. Culture, laws, the arts, religion, and everyone else repeatedly suggest that all lives should matter. Clearly, that message already abounds in our society.
The problem is that, in practice, the world doesn't work the way. You see the film Nightcrawler? You know the part where Renee Russo tells Jake Gyllenhal that she doesn't want footage of a black or latino person dying because she wants news stories about affluent white people being killed? That's not made up out of whole cloth -- there is a news bias toward stories that the majority of the audience (who are white) can identify with. So when a young black man gets killed, it's generally not considered "news". A police officer chokes a man to death and walks. A police officer kicks in a door in the middle of the night and shoots a 9yo girl... And walks. A cop stands on the hood of a hoopty and reloads 2 TIMES... And walks. Meanwhile a middle-aged white woman being killed is treated as breaking news. And to a large degree, that is accurate -- young black men are killed in significantly disproportionate numbers, which is why we don't treat it as anything new. But the result is that, societally, we don't pay as much attention to certain people's deaths as we do to others. So, currently, we don't treat all lives as though they matter equally. Not all lives matter equally.
Just like asking dad for your fair share, the phrase "black lives matter" also has an implicit "too" at the end: it's saying that black lives should also matter. But responding to this by saying "all lives matter" is willfully going back to ignoring the problem. It's a way of dismissing the statement by falsely suggesting that it means "only black lives matter," when that is obviously not true. Saying #alllivesmatter" as a direct response to #blacklivesmatter" is essentially saying that we should just go back to ignoring the problem.
TL;DR: The phrase "Black lives matter" carries an implicit "too" at the end; it's saying that black lives should also matter. Saying "all lives matter" is dismissing the very problems that the phrase is trying to draw attention to.
The problem is that the statement "I should get my fair share" had an implicit "too" at the end: "I should get my fair share, *too*, just like everyone else." But your dad's response treated your statement as though you meant "only I should get my fair share", which clearly was not your intention. As a result, his statement that "everyone should get their fair share," while true, only served to ignore the problem you were trying to point out.
That's the situation of the "black lives matter" movement. Culture, laws, the arts, religion, and everyone else repeatedly suggest that all lives should matter. Clearly, that message already abounds in our society.
The problem is that, in practice, the world doesn't work the way. You see the film Nightcrawler? You know the part where Renee Russo tells Jake Gyllenhal that she doesn't want footage of a black or latino person dying because she wants news stories about affluent white people being killed? That's not made up out of whole cloth -- there is a news bias toward stories that the majority of the audience (who are white) can identify with. So when a young black man gets killed, it's generally not considered "news". A police officer chokes a man to death and walks. A police officer kicks in a door in the middle of the night and shoots a 9yo girl... And walks. A cop stands on the hood of a hoopty and reloads 2 TIMES... And walks. Meanwhile a middle-aged white woman being killed is treated as breaking news. And to a large degree, that is accurate -- young black men are killed in significantly disproportionate numbers, which is why we don't treat it as anything new. But the result is that, societally, we don't pay as much attention to certain people's deaths as we do to others. So, currently, we don't treat all lives as though they matter equally. Not all lives matter equally.
Just like asking dad for your fair share, the phrase "black lives matter" also has an implicit "too" at the end: it's saying that black lives should also matter. But responding to this by saying "all lives matter" is willfully going back to ignoring the problem. It's a way of dismissing the statement by falsely suggesting that it means "only black lives matter," when that is obviously not true. Saying #alllivesmatter" as a direct response to #blacklivesmatter" is essentially saying that we should just go back to ignoring the problem.
TL;DR: The phrase "Black lives matter" carries an implicit "too" at the end; it's saying that black lives should also matter. Saying "all lives matter" is dismissing the very problems that the phrase is trying to draw attention to.
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SGM (Join to see)
The media decides what is news and what isn't, I agree with. The media underplays black deaths I cannot agree with. In fact, I think the opposite is true. The media considers which news item is most likely to generate outrage, hatred, racial violence, and perhaps tomorrow's news item, and THAT'S the one they run with.
Perhaps it's time we quit letting the media hide it's bias behind the First Amendment. The First Amendment was intended to protect the media from retaliation for publishing stories unpopular to the government, not to massage the news to increase their profits.
Perhaps it's time we quit letting the media hide it's bias behind the First Amendment. The First Amendment was intended to protect the media from retaliation for publishing stories unpopular to the government, not to massage the news to increase their profits.
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SGT Curtis Earl
The bigger question that I see is around communal action in the first place. The presumption that outrage just coalesced out of the blue around the deaths of black people murdered by police is pretty impressively detached from reality. People took action, people organized and people demonstrated.
The media sure didn't create the "Black Lives Matter" movement, and their shitty, slanted coverage of black deaths at the hands of the police are part of what fueled the movement in the first place. People were dying, and no one gave a damn. Shame on anyone if they actually believe that this is a new occurrence. Neither news media nor government officials have been covering issues of racism and police brutality. The discourse that we see in the media currently happened only after more than a year of concerted effort, protests and eventually rioting. Go back twenty years and you'll see an even higher level of brutality and no one cared back then. Thank what God you believe in for body cameras and twitter. Otherwise, cops would still be shooting 9 year old little girls in their sleep and murdering elderly black people in their recliners. How many 2 year olds have to be flash-banged in their cribs before we stop apologizing for our shitty police force? They murder and lie so often that we're forcing them to wear cameras on their uniforms.
I'm honestly appalled at the mental gymnastics people will us to avoid holding LEO responsible for the profiling and crappy procedures. Seriously, how many people have to die before we admit there's a problem. We're currently at about 2-3 a month.
The media sure didn't create the "Black Lives Matter" movement, and their shitty, slanted coverage of black deaths at the hands of the police are part of what fueled the movement in the first place. People were dying, and no one gave a damn. Shame on anyone if they actually believe that this is a new occurrence. Neither news media nor government officials have been covering issues of racism and police brutality. The discourse that we see in the media currently happened only after more than a year of concerted effort, protests and eventually rioting. Go back twenty years and you'll see an even higher level of brutality and no one cared back then. Thank what God you believe in for body cameras and twitter. Otherwise, cops would still be shooting 9 year old little girls in their sleep and murdering elderly black people in their recliners. How many 2 year olds have to be flash-banged in their cribs before we stop apologizing for our shitty police force? They murder and lie so often that we're forcing them to wear cameras on their uniforms.
I'm honestly appalled at the mental gymnastics people will us to avoid holding LEO responsible for the profiling and crappy procedures. Seriously, how many people have to die before we admit there's a problem. We're currently at about 2-3 a month.
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"HispanicLivesMatter" "SpecialistLivesMatter" "NativeAmericanLivesMatter" "BilingualLivesMatter" "VeteranLivesMatter" "EntrepreneurLivesMatter"
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SGM (Join to see)
Simple and excellent point. Do we really want to list every life that matters in a separate slogan? But when you say "All Lives Matter", you are attacked as if that means "Black Lives Don't Matter."
The simple truth is that if "Black Lives Matter" is some kind of copyrighted slogan and an other race/creed/identification put in place of "Black" is somehow discriminatory, then it's clear that "Black Lives Matter" is absolutely racist and exclusivist.
I am in favor of body cameras and other items to help make sure the police are doing the right thing. But another truth is that the vast majority are hard-working, fair-minded, public-spirited servants of our society, who risk their lives every day just like we have done in the military. Every single time a cop pulls someone over, he doesn't know if this one is going to pull a gun on him.
I know that mentioning Trayvon Martin and Zimmerman will infuriate some people. And I don't think Zimmerman should have been doing his patrolling as aggressively and as closely as he was. But somehow, Zimmerman wound up on the bottom with a much larger person on top of him who had been watching a little too much Mixed Martial Arts shows. If your first thought is to respond to something bad with violence, then you have no right to complain when violence is the response.
Or you tell me - is violence allowed if you are black and reacting to perceived racial profiling?
The simple truth is that if "Black Lives Matter" is some kind of copyrighted slogan and an other race/creed/identification put in place of "Black" is somehow discriminatory, then it's clear that "Black Lives Matter" is absolutely racist and exclusivist.
I am in favor of body cameras and other items to help make sure the police are doing the right thing. But another truth is that the vast majority are hard-working, fair-minded, public-spirited servants of our society, who risk their lives every day just like we have done in the military. Every single time a cop pulls someone over, he doesn't know if this one is going to pull a gun on him.
I know that mentioning Trayvon Martin and Zimmerman will infuriate some people. And I don't think Zimmerman should have been doing his patrolling as aggressively and as closely as he was. But somehow, Zimmerman wound up on the bottom with a much larger person on top of him who had been watching a little too much Mixed Martial Arts shows. If your first thought is to respond to something bad with violence, then you have no right to complain when violence is the response.
Or you tell me - is violence allowed if you are black and reacting to perceived racial profiling?
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I interpret it as some groups do not see the whole picture. All lives matter no matter what color/race/creed you are. You cannot just pick and choose certain situations and then throw this out there. It's funny how this slogan doesn't seem to apply to "all black lives" such as black on black crime...only white on black issues. There are more black on black murders then there are all other type of murders put together across the US, but I have NEVER not once heard any one say Black lives matter in these situations....when the 5 yr old boy and the 7 yr old boy and others were killed in Chicago between May and July 2015....I did not see "black lives matter" any where in print or on the News..... To me, i interpret it as "racist" because all lives should matter in any type of situation. This slogan began??? I believe after Trevon Martin killing....and it seems to only apply or brought up when a person other than Black kills a person of Black. I watched a news clip on MSNBC where a black lady went crazy stating that the Martin O'Malley should not have and didn't have the right to say "all lives matter." UH....Hellllooo??! why not? why is it wrong? This has gotten way out of hand....All Lives Matter!
I have a God Daughter whom I practically raised...she is BLASIAN...that's half black half Asian....she feels the same way...ALL LIVES MATTER!
I have a God Daughter whom I practically raised...she is BLASIAN...that's half black half Asian....she feels the same way...ALL LIVES MATTER!
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Personally, I think the slogan drives a bigger divide into the population.
Yes black lives matter, as do white, red, yellow, green, blue, or whatever classification you wish to put on a person. Is it bad that the some of us had to struggle more than others to get the footholds needed in this country to be successful. Yes, some still deal with issues of fairness to this day. Yet, some slogans, at least to me, only serve to maintain this gap not reduce it.
Yes black lives matter, as do white, red, yellow, green, blue, or whatever classification you wish to put on a person. Is it bad that the some of us had to struggle more than others to get the footholds needed in this country to be successful. Yes, some still deal with issues of fairness to this day. Yet, some slogans, at least to me, only serve to maintain this gap not reduce it.
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It keeps us divided along racial lines, which is something we don't need. The move divided we are, the easier it is for our enemies, both foreign and domestic, to do as they will to us as we're too busy fighting ourselves.
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