On “Black Lives Matter”
[guest post by Dana]
Two op-eds with two different perspectives on the Black Lives Matters movement were published just two days apart, as well as a third video “op-ed” by an angry resident of Missouri.
First, Leonard Pitts wrote about the “moral cowardice” of the Black Lives Matter counter-claim that “all lives matter”, a claim that Mike Huckabee made on CNN:
When I hear people scream ‘black lives matter,’ I’m thinking, of course, they do. But all lives matter. It’s not that any life matters more than another.”
Pitts also objected to Huckabee’s claim that “Martin Luther King would be “appalled by the notion that we’re elevating some lives above others.””
Thus he says of the Black Lives Matter movement:
Namely because, while police abuse is not unknown in other lives, it is disproportionate in black lives. This is what Huckabee and the “All lives matter” crowd quail at recognizing. To treat where it hurts, one must first acknowledge that it still hurts, something conservatives often find hard to do because it gives the lie to their self-congratulatory balloon juice about how this country has overcome its founding sin.
That sort of willful ignorance has, unfortunately, become ubiquitous.
Which is why, for me, at least, the most inspiring sight to come out of Charleston following the racial massacre there was not the lowering of the Confederate battle flag, welcome as that was. Rather, it was a march through town by a mostly white crowd chanting, “Black lives matter! Black lives matter!”
To see those white sisters and brothers adopt that cry was a soul-filling reminder that at least some of us still realize we all have access — connection — to each other’s pain and joy by simple virtue of the fact that we all are human.
God love them, they did not slink guiltily from that connection. Instead, they ran bravely to it.
Second, GOP Presidential candidate Ben Carson wrote about the misdirection of the Black Lives Matter movement:
The idea that disrupting and protesting Bernie Sanders speeches will change what is wrong in America is lunacy. The “BlackLivesMatter” movement is focused on the wrong targets, to the detriment of blacks who would like to see real change and to the benefit of its powerful white liberal funders using the attacks on Sanders for political purposes that mean nothing for the problems that face our community.
The notion that some lives might matter less than others is meant to enrage. That anger is distracting us from what matters most. We’re right to be angry, but we have to stay smart.
Of course, the protesters are right that racial policing issues exist and some rotten policemen took actions that killed innocent people. Those actions were inexcusable and they should be prosecuted to deter such acts in the future.
But unjust treatment from police did not fill our inner cities with people who face growing hopelessness. Young men and women can’t find jobs. Parents don’t have the skills to compete in a modern job market. Far too many families are torn and tattered by self-inflicted wounds. Violence often walks alongside people who have given up hope.
And, compelling lifelong Missouri resident and Navy veteran Peggy Hubbard to record a searing video about the confused priorities of the Black Lives Matter movement were two recent deaths: Mansur Ball-Bey was a young black man who police claim tried to “run out the back door of the house where they were serving a warrant and that he pointed a stolen gun at them before they shot” and the death of 9-year-old Jamyla Bolden who was killed by a stray bullet from a drive-by shooting while she did her homework. Hubard takes no prisoners:
Last night, who do you think they protested for? The thug. The criminal. Because they’re hollering police brutality. Are you fucking kidding me? Police brutality? How about black brutality. You black people, my black people, you are the most violent motherfuckers I have ever seen in my life. A little girl is dead. You say black lives matter? Her life mattered. Her dreams mattered … Yet you trifling motherfuckers are out there tearing up the neighborhood I grew up in.
Not to be deterred by her critics, Hubbard responded to those accusing her of being an Uncle Tom:
“Given all the comments I received, black and white, saying, ‘Don’t stop, we need your voice,’ I’m going to keep going,” she said. “This is not a race issue. It never has been a racial issue … This is about accountability and responsibility … Last night we had another homicide … and we’re saying black lives matter. Black lives matter, white lives matter, Asian lives matter, Hispanic lives matter, Lithuanian lives matter, Russian lives matter, life in general matters … but it’s never gonna get better until we admit that we have a problem in our community.”
–Dana
Hello.
Dana (86e864) — 8/25/2015 @ 6:50 amWhy, oh why, whenever a black is shot by police, do they immediately compare it to an innocent bystander killed by some gang banger. It’s as if, deep in their soul, they see no difference between the cop and the hoodlum. Do they even recognize what they’re saying?
Mike Giles (f0cdc4) — 8/25/2015 @ 7:02 am#BlackLivesMatter when they are ended by a white guy or a policeman of any race, though if tyhe officer is white, it’s a twofer. #BlackLivesDontMatter if killed by another black guy, or by an abortionist of any color.
That is all.
The Dana who's almost surely a racist in the eyes of the left (f6a568) — 8/25/2015 @ 7:06 amWhy were white Americans upset over the Charleston shooting? Because the victims were all good people, all God-fearing people engaged in Bible study. Why, it’s almost as though white Americans could see the difference between truly innocent people and wannabe thugs like Michael Brown.
The Dana who's almost surely a racist in the eyes of the left, but doesn't really care (f6a568) — 8/25/2015 @ 7:10 ambut it’s never gonna get better until we admit that we have a problem in our community.”
Absolutely. And that problem, which liberals like Leonard Pitts can’t get through their thick skulls, is the chronic, mindless leftist ideology and emotions that dominate and roil black America.
“Oh, what the hell are you talking about!? That’s not an issue or relevant!,” folks like Pitts will proclaim.
Yea, right.
If most black were staunch conservatives, you’d want to bring back “separate but equal” and start musing, “well, maybe some black lives matter more (or less) than others.”
Mark (30fc68) — 8/25/2015 @ 7:14 amAmerica continues to use black people as fuel for its engine. Police states need a populace to brutalize – to get the message across, and because police states like to brutalize. Black people have been that populace for America from the beginning.
Leviticus (f9a067) — 8/25/2015 @ 7:52 amIt’s good to see the idiots are out this morning.
Edoc118 (5e3d10) — 8/25/2015 @ 7:57 amblm isn’t a movement it’s just a bunch of otherwise-unemployed whores hired by George Soros like how he did with Occupy Wall Street
happyfeet (a037ad) — 8/25/2015 @ 8:00 amGod is in the business of valuing lives. I’m just His humble servant and if He doesn’t bring you to pass my way we’ll just assume yours is above my pay grade, mm’Kay?
DNF (ffe548) — 8/25/2015 @ 8:13 amDo they even recognize what they’re saying?
Of course they do, they also know neither the national media or political elites will expose them for yet another manufactured outrage in the string of idiot hypocrisies they use to smear law enforcement and riot in the streets looting and killing. And, all the while enjoying the protection of race hustlers, useful idiots, and corrupt officials while violent thugs collect paychecks from George Soros.
For Leviticus: When Michael Brown pulled that strong-arm robbery then later tried to grab Officer Wilson’s gun it wasn’t the police who were doing the brutalizing. The police in Baltimore were ordered to stand-down by the city’s Black leaders while violent thugs rioted, burned the city, and brutalized the cops. Trayvon Martin was brutalizing George Zimmerman when he got what he had coming but that didn’t stop the media from portraying Martin as the victim even if they had to fudge the audio and video evidence of Martin’s brutal assault.
ropelight (c23644) — 8/25/2015 @ 8:17 am6, Ya ain’t seen nuthin’ yet, Sprout. Gird yer loins.
DNF (ffe548) — 8/25/2015 @ 8:19 amThe Dana who’s almost surely a racist in the eyes of the left, but doesn’t really care
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been called a racist …
I wouldn’t let black people know. They’d rob me.
(Getting back at Leviticus, mostly.)
nk (dbc370) — 8/25/2015 @ 8:25 am@2 Mike Giles: Who is the “they” that you’re talking about?
Joshua (9ede0e) — 8/25/2015 @ 8:34 amIf what matters in your life is mindlessly chanting three word slogans … your life probably shouldn’t matter.
htom (4ca1fa) — 8/25/2015 @ 8:53 ami’m so over social justice
it’s just extremely boring anymore
and it’s not just me my friend t is bored with it too
happyfeet (a037ad) — 8/25/2015 @ 9:03 amGreetings:
Perhaps, and just perhaps because if anyone at all objects you can certainly remove this comment quick like a bunny, I just wish that somewhere there were statistics about black on white crime versus white on black crime, starting with, say, homicides and rapes because a fundamental part of my racism is going from the general to the specific and not from the specific to general. A subset of a subset is, as is said in a certain patois, what it is.
11B40 (6abb5c) — 8/25/2015 @ 9:08 amJust goes to show that these days the new racism is to judge a man by the content of his character, and not the color of his skin.
The Sage (44bd0d) — 8/25/2015 @ 9:22 am11B40, I don’t know how much I’d trust Holder’s FBI’s statistics, but here you go: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6
nk (dbc370) — 8/25/2015 @ 9:35 amWhy, it’s almost as though white Americans could see the difference between truly innocent people and wannabe thugs like Michael Brown.
My 25 year old daughter lives in Charleston and attended the service the Sunday after the shooting in that black church and she marched across the bridge with 10,000 people, mostly white. She is conservative in spite of a lot of left wing BS at U of Arizona that she was subjected to.
I am very proud of her.
She is also beautiful.
Mike K (90dfdc) — 8/25/2015 @ 10:05 amThere are certain ideas so dumb I can’t believe anyone wasted any time or effort on them.
#BlackLivesMatter
No s***.
If black lives didn’t matter, would I have wasted my time going door to door in south Dallas trying to get Eddie Bernice Johnson ousted and Pastor Broden elected? And then hung out outside the polling place (observing all applicable laws regarding distances, etc.)?
I could think of other examples, but then that would start sounding like some treatise about how I can’t be racist because some of my closest friends are black.
Actually right now none of my closest friends are black. It’s just how it works out in life, I guess. People drift out of your life, and you lose touch. Also, I don’t have a Hollywood casting agent doing my friend search so my circle of friends resembles the cast of glee or whatever.
Point being, until the #BlackLivesMatter crowd came along it never occurred to me that they didn’t.
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 8/25/2015 @ 10:14 amReally Levidicus? America is a police stare and has been from the beginning? Then why don’t they leave? Why don’t you? Who wants to live in a police state. You should visit where my wife just was then you’ll know what a police state is. BTW, if blacks are being “brutalized” it’s other blacks who do the brutalization. Look at the stats and stop parroting leftist bullsh!t.
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie (f4eb27) — 8/25/2015 @ 10:23 amThe Rev Hoagie wrote:
Last time I looked, people were trying everything that they could to get into the United States, not get out of it. Or have the Canadians built a border fence to keep us out?
The Dana wondering where the border fence is (f6a568) — 8/25/2015 @ 10:42 amWell Dana, for Levidicus to make a claim that stupid, that uninformed and that demagogic is ridiculous. If one wants to pine away about the poor abused colored people living in ghettos, eating surplus cheese, living in government housing, being indolent and on the dole, having kid after kid out of wedlock, using abusing and selling drugs, shooting and robbing and raping each other, going to substandard schools and being refused vouchers to help their children, living in neighborhoods inundated with bars, liquor stores and Planned Parenthood clinics specifically placed there to kill colored babies, lousy health insurance, diets, job options and life expectancy then one needs to ask the Democrap party and their own home grown race baiters why they keep doing these thing to colored people. Obviously the obvious hasn’t dawned on Levidicus yet. I don’t know of one successful Republican colored American who was arrested for crimes, do you? Cause I guarantee if there was he’d be all over the liberal news.
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie (f4eb27) — 8/25/2015 @ 10:59 amOne more comment. If the damn democraps have been so good to, good for and compassionate toward the colored people why, oh why are they still deep in the same crap they were in when LBJ started The Great Society? Why? Because that’s where the democaps want them and keep them. If colored Americans don’t have the common sense to dump the party which has all but re-enslaved them then they don’t deserve jack sh!t.
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie (f4eb27) — 8/25/2015 @ 11:15 amThe Imam Barack Hussein Hoagie wrote:
Dinesh D’Souza.
The Dana who heard about it (f6a568) — 8/25/2015 @ 11:33 amDinesh is East Indian isn’t he? I’m talking “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People”, colored. You know, like I am.
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie (f4eb27) — 8/25/2015 @ 11:44 amohnoes more asian anchor babies help us jeb
happyfeet (a037ad) — 8/25/2015 @ 11:45 amI resent this whole conversation because I’m a colored American.
Sure, the color is white. But so what? White is a color.
It’s sort of like how the term “ethnic” is used these days.
Apparently it means non-white.
Excuse me? My people have better ethnic food than just about anyone else. I’ll put my Pere al Vino Rosso or Saltimbocca against your fried bananas and monkey meat any day, rest of the world!
And that’s just two. There’s more where that came from.
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 8/25/2015 @ 11:45 amWe’ll just have to deport them all, Juan by Wong, happyfeet.
nk (dbc370) — 8/25/2015 @ 12:01 pmMr 57 wrote:
For me, it depends on the season. I get pretty pale — though not Irish redheaded pale! — during the winter, but I’m fairly darkly tanned now that it’s August. I guess that I’m a multi-colored American!
The Dana who has a fairly good (farmer's) tan (f6a568) — 8/25/2015 @ 12:35 pmAnyone see the HBO film on The Grim Sleeper serial killer? The suspect, Lonnie Franklin Jr., is a black male charged with the murder of 10 or more black females in South Los Angeles. The DNA evidence against him is rock solid. Franklin also kept souvenirs of his victims like BTK killer, Dennis Radar.
But in the HBO film, black folks rail and rant against the LAPD, who “don’t care because we’re black.” The fact that Los Angeles law enforcement spent enormous time and money to catch the killer meant nothing to them.
There was little or no animosity toward Franklin, who killed (probably) dozens of black women. This is the usual for black folks in black on black crimes.
No matter what, blame it all on white people.
DN (78a7ed) — 8/25/2015 @ 12:40 pmGet it right! #ONLYBlackLivesMatter
PCD (39058b) — 8/25/2015 @ 1:16 pmDuring the summer I get tanned enough to be confused with an Iranian or a Mexican.
This isn’t just my opinion. I’ve got jumped in places like Bakersfield because people thought I was Mexican.
It was kind of a relief to go to the East Coast where people took a dislike to me for the Dago and Wop which I am.
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 8/25/2015 @ 1:16 pmhttp://www.rotecradialengines.com/
Free advice, but this is no kidding worth it.
You just don’t fire up a radial engine.
For several reasons, most of which have to do with the fine tolerances they’re built to.
But one reason that should be obvious to anyone is that the oil pools in the bottom cylinders.
It’s why you have to go through this ritual, only seen in the first few seconds, where they’re rotating the prop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT_PClBc8vE
“Bist du bei mir” comes from another people who like me lack ethnicity, I am led to believe.
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 8/25/2015 @ 1:33 pmMrs. Rev. Hoagie is my anchor baby, happyfeet.
Rev. Barack Hussein Hoagie (f4eb27) — 8/25/2015 @ 1:42 pmI am sure she is lovely, Mr. Reverend Hoagie.
Steve57 (3b2e7d) — 8/25/2015 @ 1:51 pmMissouri resident, Navy veteran, and Mom Peggy Hubbard leads the charge against racial prejudice.
n.n (b378dc) — 8/25/2015 @ 2:21 pmMake America great! A veritable shining city on a hill overlooking Earth’s gardens and gardeners.
Sorry… Black Lives Don’t Matter
How else can you explain the black on black killings in Chicago?
Patrick (ce7fc3) — 8/25/2015 @ 2:45 pmMrs. Rev. Hoagie is my anchor baby, happyfeet.
omg that’s an r&b song
happyfeet (a037ad) — 8/25/2015 @ 2:48 pmI agree with Peggy that children need to be held accountable for their actions by parents. I say, starting at the earliest age, and ending when either the child, or the parents, die. Because love.
felipe (56556d) — 8/25/2015 @ 3:10 pmOne aspect of white privilege is overlooked: If a black person who is not particularly well know outside his neighborhood is killed by another black person, the victim continues to be relatively unknown. But if the victim is killed by a white person, the victim is, in effect, ennobled.
Richard Aubrey (472a6f) — 8/25/2015 @ 3:34 pmHeaven Sutton (aka “who?”) and Jamyla Bolden (aka “who?”) remain unknown, compared to, say, Michael Brown.
BlackLivesMatter is oblivious to the problem they’re protesting. They need to address the wholesale lack of trust their communities have with law enforcement in general. They’ll never fix any problems if they always view police as enemies. They only end up advocating for lawlessness by taking that angle. They also put people in danger from police because they encourage needless heated encounters with police.
Dejectedhead (ba8561) — 8/25/2015 @ 4:44 pmCalifornia Attorney General Kamala Harris disagrees.
She said, ““Local law enforcement must be able to use their discretion to determine who can carry a concealed weapon”.”
If there were racial profiling issues in law enforcement, then we would not be able to trust “local law enforcement [to]be able to use their discretion to determine who can carry a concealed weapon”, because they would use their discretion in a racially discriminatory matter.
Harris is Attorney General of California, which makes her an expert in matters pertaining to law enforcement, which makes it impossible for her to be wrong in matters in law enforcement. Thertefore, we can trust “local law enforcement [to] be able to use their discretion to determine who can carry a concealed weapon” QED.
Michael Ejercito (d74b61) — 8/25/2015 @ 9:56 pm