Note: When I say "evaluating", what I'm actually trying to evaluate is a series of claims that Black Lives Matter is -- let me go look -- immoral, evil, anti-police, pro-violence, anti-white, and pure Marxism -- quite possibly all at the same time. What I've seen so far is largely what the organization presents itself as being: a response to a genuine problem of injustice, focused primarily but not exclusively on the racial imbalances in our justice and law-enforcement system(s), and promoting its aims through peaceful (if sometimes disruptive) means. So I'm not "evaluating" the organization, the movement, or even the slogan in any sense that resembles "making sure they measure up to my high (and self-righteous) moral standards". It's just that I've been told that I don't understand that these are Bad People, and I clearly haven't done my research -- so I'm doing my research by taking a closer look.
So, if you want to know whether or not I'm approaching this question with a bias, well: I am. And that's what it looks like.
Next up in the Things I should really know about Black Lives Matter: the founders are bad people. Alicia Garza apparently said: "[BLM] is an acknowledgement Black poverty and genocide is state violence." She blames Black community problems on the state, and she (and her organization) promote hatred and violence as a way of attaining their goal of a separate Black nation. Garza's inspirations come from militant leaders of the 1960s and 70s rather than from the non-violence of Dr. Martin Luther King.
I, um, yeah. I suppose you could argue that "genocide" and "state violence" are loaded terms, except that as far as I can tell they're also accurate terms. And there are any number of examples of various aspects of "the state" creating problems for black communities and even "the black community" overall, insofar as there can be said to be a single black community. None of that seems poorly grounded or even particularly controversial -- at least not unless you assume that it must mean that the entirety of the United States government at all levels (Federal, State, County, and Local) was at all times hostile to black people and always out to kill as many of them as possible, which I'm pretty sure is not what Black Lives Matter and its founders are trying to say here.
...She (and her organization) promote hatred and violence as a way of attaining their goal of a separate Black nation. I'm now up to about fifty-six hours of following the Black Lives Matter feed on Twitter. (Again: their feed. Not the hashtag. Not any apparently-related groups or individuals. Just their feed.) Plus, as I was advised to do, I've been looking at their website. And let me tell you, if they're promoting violence, they're doing an extremely good job of hiding it. I can't find a single call to violence. I'm not even finding anything that I can unquestionably count as hostile towards police. And I can't find anything about creating a separate black nation. I remember some calls for that sort of thing back in the sixties and seventies; I don't see anything of the sort here.
There's more. Of course there's more. But this is all I'm looking at tonight. I'm going to set this to post, and then I'm going to do some writing on the Dark Fantasy project.
I think survivors of the holocaust would take umbrage with Black Lives Matter's use of the word "genocide."
ReplyDeleteProbably, but let's face it, the word in current usage has been stretched out. Witness the "white genocide" folks who insist that insist that immigration and diversity is genocide against "white culture".
Delete"Stretched out"? You must mean redefined. People who have experienced true genocide would think otherwise. Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, etc. Six million Jews were murdered, exterminated like bugs, at the hands of the Hitler-led Nazis.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's anywhere near as much of a misuse as you seem to think, Patti. One of the primary things that Black Lives matter is trying to do is get people to realize that black people and brown people are disproportionately likely to be killed by police; which is to say that we have a situation where government employees are systematically killing people based on their ethnicity; and since police are rarely even indicted (let alone convicted) for those killings, our government apparently either approves of such things, or at least doesn't mind. So no, I don't think you have to stretch very far at all to call such a situation "genocide". Maybe genocide on a slow burn, but still genocide.
ReplyDeleteNow, "systematically" doesn't mean maliciously or even deliberately -- again, this is not to say that all cops are evil or that the police are just like the Khmer Rouge, or even that this sort of thing is equally likely at all places and times -- but unintentional evils are still evils.
I hear the rhetoric but don't see the evidence.
DeleteTry this:
Delete"A geographically-resolved, multi-level Bayesian model is used to analyze the data presented in the U.S. Police-Shooting Database (USPSD) in order to investigate the extent of racial bias in the shooting of American civilians by police officers in recent years. In contrast to previous work that relied on the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Reports that were constructed from self-reported cases of police-involved homicide, this data set is less likely to be biased by police reporting practices. County-specific relative risk outcomes of being shot by police are estimated as a function of the interaction of: 1) whether suspects/civilians were armed or unarmed, and 2) the race/ethnicity of the suspects/civilians. The results provide evidence of a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans, in that the probability of being {black, unarmed, and shot by police} is about 3.49 times the probability of being {white, unarmed, and shot by police} on average. Furthermore, the results of multi-level modeling show that there exists significant heterogeneity across counties in the extent of racial bias in police shootings, with some counties showing relative risk ratios of 20 to 1 or more. Finally, analysis of police shooting data as a function of county-level predictors suggests that racial bias in police shootings is most likely to emerge in police departments in larger metropolitan counties with low median incomes and a sizable portion of black residents, especially when there is high financial inequality in that county. There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates."
Or this:
"PERF’s Board of Directors was quick to realize that the rioting last summer in Ferguson was not a story that would fade away quickly, and we decided to hold a national conference in Chicago about the implications of Ferguson for policing. That meeting, held on September 16–17, just five weeks after the Ferguson incident, was written up in 'Defining Moments for Police Chiefs,' our last Critical Issues in Policing report.
"One of the key issues we discussed that day in Chicago was the need to rethink the training that police officers receive on de-escalation strategies and tactics. As we look back at the most controversial police shooting incidents, we sometimes find that while the shooting may be legally justified, there were missed opportunities to ratchet down the encounter, to slow things down, to call in additional resources, in the minutes before the shooting occurred."
Sticking to the subject that white police are committing genocide against Blacks. First of all what is "genocide"? According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, "The term did not exist before 1944. It is a very specific term, referring to violent crimes committed against groups with the intent to destroy the existence of the group." The word comes from "geno," from the Greek word for race or tribe; and "cide," derived from the Latin word for killing. Neither one of your articles shows any evidence for genocide. The first one is based on "degrees of belief." Really? And, oh my gosh, there is a plethora of contradictory research, charts, statistics, graphs, etc. The second one is from a think tank proposing recommendations for police to follow; the police have said this is a very controversial report and The Force Science Institute reported their concerns.
Deletehttps://azplea.com/plea-news/police-executive-research-forum-issues-controversial-report/
DeleteThe first link I posted is a study. You wanted evidence that the problem that Black Lives Matter is trying to address actually exists. So, I posted a link to a study, which found "evidence of a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans, in that the probability of being {black, unarmed, and shot by police} is about 3.49 times the probability of being {white, unarmed, and shot by police} on average. Furthermore, the results of multi-level modeling show that there exists significant heterogeneity across counties in the extent of racial bias in police shootings, with some counties showing relative risk ratios of 20 to 1 or more."
DeleteFrankly, I see the question of proper/improper use of the word "genocide" as a secondary consideration (in fact, almost a distraction). Yes, the definition does include the concept of "extermination" but it doesn't specify that the extermination must be immediate or complete. And if you work from the latin roots, the term is actually more apt: it's the killing of a particular tribe. But, again: that's only appropriate if you agree that black people, and particularly black men, are getting killed off in ways that are directly liked to their skin color.
I'm not surprised that PERF's report is considered "controversial" or that some police departments strongly disagree with it. The whole issue's controversial; otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation. But being controversial, or having particular law enforcement agencies voice concerns and objections, is not a reason to dismiss the report entirely.