But why is it fair to focus on “Whichever Lives Are Most Affected By Police Brutality At The Moment” when that’s a tiny subset of the lives being affected by brutality. The number of lives affected by the “brutality” of blacks is much much larger, yet focusing on that would be racist.
In the specific context of police brutality in America, victimization—of the innocent, by the way, as well as the guilty—is disproportionately determined by race. This disparity is the specific problem BLM was set up to address. By the logic that says it is not useful for anyone to focus on this specific problem because other, more widespread problems exist, you can say it’s worthless to focus on any specific problem if there exists a greater problem. Why waste any energy on any problem in America at all? America is a small part of the world. Focus on malaria instead. Or focus everything on climate change. That’s a bigger problem than any other.
So if it makes sense to focus on the fact that rapists are more likely to be male why doesn’t it make sense to focus on the fact that rapists are more likely to be black and/or Muslim?
That was nowhere stated or implied in what I said. It’s one thing expanding the discussion from “debating the relationship between BLM and ALM” to “debating the motive force behind BLM in general”, as has happened here, but I don’t want to get into a discussion of sexual violence right now so we’ll leave that.
The argument for, e.g., “Black Lives Matter” is that we should focus blacks beaten up or shot by cops because those are more common.
No, not because it’s more common—it’s nowhere near more common, given the difference in population sizes—because it’s disproportionate.
The argument for “Black History Month” is that we should focus on blacks who have accomplished historically significant things because there are less common.
Again, no—the argument for Black History Month is that history as generally taught focuses on the historical roles played by white people to the near or total exclusion of black people.
I think we ought to pause for a second here and query whether this discussion is worth pursuing. We’re discussing a hot-button, emotionally-charged political topic on LW, which isn’t really the place for that, and we’re coming at it with, I think, a different set of previously accepted truths and values. It’s hard to see a clear path to one of us changing our mind or our outlook because there’s not a clear argument here. We’ve already gone from “BLM v. ALM” to “BLM in general” and are starting to creep into “race relations in America in general”. If the topic’s too broad and the ground too easily shifted, we risk devolving into a useless arguments-as-soldiers sort of exchange that doesn’t lead anywhere. Unless we can agree on one specific issue and stick to hashing that out, we might be better off wrapping up this discussion—after you’ve made any counter-points you’d like, of course.
In the specific context of police brutality in America, victimization—of the innocent, by the way, as well as the guilty—is disproportionately determined by race. This disparity is the specific problem BLM was set up to address. By the logic that says it is not useful for anyone to focus on this specific problem because other, more widespread problems exist, you can say it’s worthless to focus on any specific problem if there exists a greater problem. Why waste any energy on any problem in America at all? America is a small part of the world. Focus on malaria instead. Or focus everything on climate change. That’s a bigger problem than any other.
That was nowhere stated or implied in what I said. It’s one thing expanding the discussion from “debating the relationship between BLM and ALM” to “debating the motive force behind BLM in general”, as has happened here, but I don’t want to get into a discussion of sexual violence right now so we’ll leave that.
No, not because it’s more common—it’s nowhere near more common, given the difference in population sizes—because it’s disproportionate.
Again, no—the argument for Black History Month is that history as generally taught focuses on the historical roles played by white people to the near or total exclusion of black people.
I think we ought to pause for a second here and query whether this discussion is worth pursuing. We’re discussing a hot-button, emotionally-charged political topic on LW, which isn’t really the place for that, and we’re coming at it with, I think, a different set of previously accepted truths and values. It’s hard to see a clear path to one of us changing our mind or our outlook because there’s not a clear argument here. We’ve already gone from “BLM v. ALM” to “BLM in general” and are starting to creep into “race relations in America in general”. If the topic’s too broad and the ground too easily shifted, we risk devolving into a useless arguments-as-soldiers sort of exchange that doesn’t lead anywhere. Unless we can agree on one specific issue and stick to hashing that out, we might be better off wrapping up this discussion—after you’ve made any counter-points you’d like, of course.