Comment by mtgp1000
5 years ago
The people downvoting you were clearly not watching the streams of protestors chanting and screaming into megaphones. The rhetoric was consistent across the country.
The premise is that the system is white supremacist in nature and must be torn down. From there it is implied that if you do not support tearing down the system, you are a white supremacist. And what do we do to white supremacists?
Except the vast majority of people who are iffy about what's going on aren't supremacists of any sort. The word "racist" is quickly losing effect.
Politics might not be 1 dimensional, but pendulums are.
> And what do we do to white supremacists?
Recent experience would say: not a whole lot. Well, maybe elect them president. You know, real scary stuff for the white supremacists.
> Except the vast majority of people who are iffy about what's going on aren't supremacists of any sort.
So is your entire complaint that, in truth, you believe in the goals that BLM has, you just are really miffed by their characterization of you as a "white supremacist", which carries too negative a connotation, and because of that you just can't bring yourself to support them?
I mean it's really easy to acknowledge that one benefits from white supremacy. I do, all the time. That doesn't inherently make me a bad person, it makes me a (white) person who lives in a society. That I happen to benefit from the same structures that put other people down, on its own, doesn't impact my moral character. What I do with that knowledge though, now that does.
What's the point of obsessing about who "benefits" from such a grossly problematic and clearly suboptimal system? Does the average white person really benefit from mass incarceration of urban minorities? One thing we can be sure of - namely that when so many people are criminalized and incarcerated, we're all being required to pay higher taxes towards the system itself.
Because mass incarceration of urban minorities is only one problem.
And there are many ways that the average white person benefits from mass incarceration: prison labor, electoral over representation, not to mention that I strive to have empathy for others.
> Does the average white person really benefit from mass incarceration of urban minorities
Have you considered why Amy Cooper called the police on a black man for making the heinous crime of asking her to leash her dog? Why there are white people calling the police on black people that did nothing wrong?
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How about we start with the blatantly racist assumption that I'm white? And the fact that such behavior is being normalized by BLM and allies, and I'm being held hostage for not going along with a movement which I believe is about to set race relations back by a hundred years?
This isn't about me. This is about the country running off a cliff. And it's the fact that I'm not even allowed to question your presumptions about how the system benefits whites at the expense of blacks - which is statistically unsupported, but that's beside my point.
Again, it's the fact that I risk being unpersoned for even bringing it up.
> How about we start with the blatantly racist assumption that I'm white?
I don't see this assumption anywhere. People of any race can be white supremacists and can benefit from white supremacy (consider for example Candace Owens).
As for the rest of your comment, I can't really address your fears. You appear to be living in a reality so different from mine, that unless you provide more explanation of how the country is running off a cliff or how black lives matter will reinstitute segregation or why you think you'll being unpersoned for... actually I can't tell what your beliefs are other than abject terror, there's not much more I can say.
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