11-18-2019, 04:38 PM
I think many of the articles I linked and also go unlinked are fairly clear about this not merely being an issue of black people protesting violently and getting shot in turn, or black people being themselves mostly murderers. Yes, a crime, regardless of background, is a crime, but what matters more is whether those who are more often stopped or investigated for a crime are stopped purely or at least mostly because of their skin color and their social class, as well as the proportionality of response. And here I enter into a conjecture: the issue that's racist is not that black people get shot, but that black people get stopped more often in the first place, and in a gun-crazy America the more stops you get into, the more likely you are to get shot. The stuff that rallyists rail against the most, after all, are cases where juveniles, the unarmed, the mentally ill, or even the *merely* armed (as opposed to those actively committing a crime) are shot.
Probably why the poem, circling back, is so problematic, and I don't just mean in a sense specific to these social issues. Yes, proper examination of these social issues is lacking, but then there is the matter of confusing the language of the original protest for something it isn't -- it is very certainly meant to "demean" the lives of those it tries to represent, all to shock outsiders to action -- as well as confusing justice for courtesy.
And then there is the linguistically specific issue of chronology. The poem goes, "When....then, only," very clearly implying a hierarchy, or at least a chronology, one should hope is not intended. In other words, there is the acknowledgement that all colors of life are not okay, which is fine, but then it goes on to say that black lives will only be liberated when all other colors are themselves liberated, which, interpreted least kindly, effectively disvalues black lives.
Or most other colors -- what about yellow, brown, or especially red lives? -- or, perhaps, those of a certain racial or political persuasion; or, more charitably, the country first is freed. Which is, again, problematic, though now we dive into issues more political and somewhat tangential than desired, and at any rate I hope you get the point.
But, to circle back, not to the poem, but to my entry point in this discussion, this is also the issue of why saying "Blue lives matter", at the very least, is awful. There are, by the categories bred into the American mindset by their frankly racist history, black lives, white lives, yellow lives, brown lives, and red lives. By this same measure, there are no such thing as blue lives. It is an abuse of humor to deflect from an important issue.
Probably why the poem, circling back, is so problematic, and I don't just mean in a sense specific to these social issues. Yes, proper examination of these social issues is lacking, but then there is the matter of confusing the language of the original protest for something it isn't -- it is very certainly meant to "demean" the lives of those it tries to represent, all to shock outsiders to action -- as well as confusing justice for courtesy.
And then there is the linguistically specific issue of chronology. The poem goes, "When....then, only," very clearly implying a hierarchy, or at least a chronology, one should hope is not intended. In other words, there is the acknowledgement that all colors of life are not okay, which is fine, but then it goes on to say that black lives will only be liberated when all other colors are themselves liberated, which, interpreted least kindly, effectively disvalues black lives.
Or most other colors -- what about yellow, brown, or especially red lives? -- or, perhaps, those of a certain racial or political persuasion; or, more charitably, the country first is freed. Which is, again, problematic, though now we dive into issues more political and somewhat tangential than desired, and at any rate I hope you get the point.
But, to circle back, not to the poem, but to my entry point in this discussion, this is also the issue of why saying "Blue lives matter", at the very least, is awful. There are, by the categories bred into the American mindset by their frankly racist history, black lives, white lives, yellow lives, brown lives, and red lives. By this same measure, there are no such thing as blue lives. It is an abuse of humor to deflect from an important issue.