If you're attempting to push me into making a total defense of every single thing anyone in the Black Lives Matter movement has done, then sorry I'm not going to take the bait.
However, to me it seems remarkably obvious that race relations are a major problem, and the Black Lives Matter movement is looking to further the discourse, which is something that needs to be done. Annoying people is often the cost of such social activism.
Nobody is baiting you - stop being so paranoid. If you have no intention to have your views/opinions questioned then don't be surprised. Also, please don't PM me nonsense with homophobic slurs in such a way that it appears that I wrote it. Immature.
It is a mark of critical thinking to look at the positives AND the negatives of any movement or ideology irrespective of how close to home it may be to you. Nobody has any problem with criticising Muslims when an attack occurs and questioning what they are doing within their communities to police such issues OR if criticizing the validity of a particular protest or any other form of social activism.
Questioning a movement or ideology as well as their practices in not devaluing the movement per se nor does it deligitimise their cause; it is treating them exactly the same way as other groups.
Waking people up to what has been done to marginalize a population is in my opinion a very good thing.
I think that BLM, if successful in waking people up to recognize this marginalization (most seem to think it doesn´t exist here), has a very real potential in peeling back the lid on a can of worms that affects more than just one community. The oppression and profiling are apparent, and spreading awareness of that is great. But the insidious and subtle discrimination and harmful media language are the real culprits in perpetuating horrible things in this culture.
For instance, I am tired of hearing about how parents of disabled children ¨were overwhelmed¨ and we should thus have sympathy for them when they kill or attempt to kill their children. The media perpetuates this burden myth and the stigma of disability and no one seems to notice. The sympathy goes to the murderer, and the child is not even presented as a person with a right to life.
I read bullshit like this and I pray something changes before my kid starts reading more than comics. How is he supposed to think about himself, when people with special needs are presented without right to life?
The media plays the same game with people of color, with the same results. You know it, and I know it.
The police are killing autistic folk because they do not behave as the police expect them to. This should not be an invitation to fire. Same with anyone else. Police training should be pertinent to the communities they serve. The rest of us have never been through training, we do not know what to expect when we are faced with armed men, and we might not even think clearly in such a circumstance. We are not conditioned. They ARE. Let´s question that conditioning.
I have dealt intimately with the police and criminal justice system here, with mostly positive results. The way I have been treated with hijab vs. without hijab is profoundly different. There is no excuse for that. None. I owe everything to the police. I send a certain department a yearly Christmas card thanking them. But that does not mean that I give them a free pass. Would they want one? I hope not.
I am not going to throw the movement out because of some who went too far. I have too much hope for it. I am not going to drown out their voices with an insistence that so and so be included, because there is a specific issue here that needs to be heard. I will only benefit from a good hard look at policies and attitudes that discriminate.
Great link there between prejudice towards the disabled community. Whilst the activism, sometimes violent in itself and self-aggrandizing ('shut down' meetings etc), is warranted given the US legacy of race relations but how it is exported to the UK is a rather curious development. The black lives matter in the UK has latched on to 'brown lives matter' and 'refugees lives matter' too.
Topic: Black Lives Matter in UK