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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

Do you know of a useful slogan that concerns itself with all problems at once?

The theory behind the objection seems to be that black people must help white people fix problems that white people experience before we can even talk about the problems that black people experience. That seems crazy to me.

Even if the US hadn't uniquely maltreated black people for centuries, black people are just 12% of the population. Why shouldn't they be able to call attention to the problems they experience without white people saying, "But what about meeeeeeee?!?"

Yes, there are a lot of things wrong that we should fix. But when somebody tries to discuss problem A and somebody else immediately leaps in to say, "Why don't you care about B?" I often suspect that the point is not to fix problem B, it's to stop the discussion of problem A.

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A useful slogan that concerns itself with all problems at once? Off the top of my head "Police enforcement in the US is out of control?"

And I think we immediately stopped seeing eye to eye right here "The theory behind the objection seems to be that black people must help white people fix problems that white people experience before we can even talk about the problems that black people experience. That seems crazy to me." No white person is saying "help me fix my problems first". They're saying, this is a single problem we all face and we should all work to fix it. They might even go further and say race is a bullshit social construct used to oppress and separate people and that their is no "us" and "them" only us.

There are a lot of cop unions, police officials, and the politicians whom they support, who would highly highly disagree with you.

You see your problem as "police enforcement in the US is out of control". Other people see different problems. You saying, "We should all work to fix my problem because I am sure your problem is the same as mine" is effectively saying, "help me fix my problem before I will listen to you about your problem". Because your notion that you understand the problems of black people better than they themselves do is definitely a sign that you aren't listening.

And sure, the American notion of race is a bullshit social construct, but it is one that white people created, put into law, and enforced. And of course used as a tool to gain power. So if white people would like race not to be an issue anymore, they should get other white people to stop making it a thing. Telling black people to stop noticing the racial bias directed against them by white people will not actually end the bias, it just hides the evidence.

[1] e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Well when I see cops shooting people for the diciest of reasons, and enforcing laws with little discretion and maximum force, I'm not convinced that I'm wrong by the argument "Black lives matter". People are free to believe what they want, but obviously there is a messaging problem with "BLM".

You don't have to be convinced to be respectful. It is certainly not their job and probably not their goal to convince you.

Also, it's not obvious at all that there's a messaging problem. I get that a bunch of white people don't like the message. But a bunch of white people will dislike anything black people do to push back against a system that harms them.

For decades white people have been telling black activists that they're doing it wrong. And their main cited evidence is that white people are uncomfortable. MLK got a lot of that, and he responded to it here:

https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....

I certainly agree that the "Black Lives Matter" slogan makes me, a white person, uncomfortable. But as far as I'm concerned, that's just what it should be doing. If other people are being maltreated by a system that I have the power to change, that shouldn't feel warm and fuzzy.

"You don't have to be convinced to be respectful. It is certainly not their job and probably not their goal to convince you."

Sorry? If they want to create political change in a democratic society, it is their job to convince him.

No, not at all.

Think about the technology adoption curve, as seen in Crossing the Chasm. It's not the job, or even the goal, of a person creating a new technology to convince everybody. At any moment, a small portion of people are open to changing their minds on a given thing. Mostly, they do what they grew up with, or what the people around them are doing.

The same is generally true socially. Consider this graph:

http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Prod...

Now subtract the death rate from that graph. If you do, you'll see that a relatively small number of people changed their minds at any given point. Much of the change comes because old bigots died off, taking their retrograde opinions to the grave with them.

So basically, an activist who wants to change minds, like a technology marketer, shouldn't focus their efforts on convincing everybody. Persuasive efforts are best spent on the people who are most ready to change. Which in my experience is generally the person listening carefully, not the guy who runs up to shout, "No, you're doing it all wrong. Do it my way."

"Black Lives Matter" is not an argument, its a rallying cry. They serve substantially different purposes. (Activists in the BLM movement make many arguments, but "Black Lives Matter" isn't one of them -- insofar as it has a structural relationship to the arguments, its a statement of a key uniting element of the moral foundation on which the arguments are based.)

> A useful slogan that concerns itself with all problems at once? Off the top of my head "Police enforcement in the US is out of control?"

Your proposal is not a slogan that "concerns itself with all problems at once", or even "all the problems that BLM addresses, plus some other problems". It is one which overlaps the problem domain addressed by Black Lives Matter, but does not encompass it.

BLM isn't just about law enforcement. In fact, the proximate trigger for its creation was the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin killing, it just happens to have come to wide attention through the movement's responses to police killings.

"Black Lives Matter ... goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes.... to include all of the ways in which Black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state." [0]

[0] http://blacklivesmatter.com/about/

Here's a suggestion: "no police state"

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