black lives matter

[denim]

Unless black lives matter, all lives do not matter. It's a small gesture but I stand in solidarity with all our black sisters, brothers and nonbinary folk out there, many of which read manga here on the dex. Protest if you can, do jail support if you can, or donate to places like the National Lawyers Guild mass defense fund. If there's anyone in NYC trying to get involved I am more than happy to try and direct people towards useful information.

 

[DewiAdriyanti]

OMG CAN YOU PLEASE ????????????????? Oh lord. @*#£&$*@,÷;'bdbd

 

[DewiAdriyanti]

I want to talk bad but the moderator is watching nowwwwwwwwwwwww.



https://youtu.be/uZDoME69Uio Miso soup make me calm.

 

[firelight]

Are you a white supremacist? How is your virtue signalling helping blacks? You say you care about them but are also trying to get guns banned so they have no way to protect themselves. Where are the people trying to reduce unemployment in black neighborhoods? No mention of America's broken education system which aims to dumb down blacks because they don't want another Malcolm X or MLK. Why do you (a non-black) speak for black people? Do you think they're dumb and need your help with everything? Why do you throw blacks aside if they don't share all of your opinions? Why are you not trying to get a UBI for blacks so they can live comfortably without resorting to theft?

Blacks are beginning to see through your lies and how you use them as pawns for your agendas. 😎

 

[sterven]

Right the same group that so easily ousts blacks if their views don't conform to their ideology great way of showing me that black lives matter.

 

[denim]

@firelight @sterven I'm not sure what "group" you think I'm a part of, I'm not trying to speak for anyone but myself.

@firelight I agree with a lot of the issues you pointed out--particularly about our awful education system, lack of employment and a UBI (I think something like Alaska's Sovereign Wealth Fund is a good start, here is a proposal by People's Policy Project that makes sense to me). Guns are a topic I personally don't have a clear stance on, I am aware of the Socialist Rifle Association which is leftist and also advocates for gun rights.

I learned that the biggest push for the militarization of our police force was a response to the crime wave which started in the 60s as a direct result of the economic crises of the time (I think caused largely by deindustrialization) and the subsequent neoliberal austerity reforms which gutted the welfare state. Funding police departments to brutalize and punish minorities was (and still is) cheaper than actually improving people's lives so they don't resort to crime. That is to say that defunding/abolishing the police as we know it needs to be done in parallel with countless other reforms that will ensure people won't continue to be left out to dry. source: https://catalyst-journal.com/vol3/no3/the-economic-origins-of-mass-incarceration

@DewiAdriyanti not sure if you're asking for more info in NYC or if you're just annoyed at my post lol

black lives matter

 

[Tlos]

black lives matter

 

[DewiAdriyanti]

OMG, as if i want to ask you baboon.

Retardation at its finest.

 

[Tamerlane]

Honestly, I feel like the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison covers this a lot better than I could ever do.

Here's a scene from when Todd Clifton, a blackman in the Harlem district who abandoned a Marxist group after he realized how pointless it all was-continuing the absurdist themes of the novel, was shot for seemingly no reason after "illegally" selling Sambo dolls/puppets without a license.

This is from his funeral and I feel it does carry the general sentiment of how I feel. Note that these are not my own but are taken directly from the novel and are meant to represent how the author feels in regards to the work, and there will be strong language, but it's for the sake of artistic expression.

Spoiler

The song had ended. Now the top of the little mountain bristled with banners, horns, and uplifted faces. I could look straight down Fifth Avenue to 125th Street, where policemen were lined behind an array of hot-dog wagons and Good Humor carts; and among the carts I saw a peanut vendor standing beneath a street lamp upon which pigeons were gathered, and now I saw him stretch out his arms with his palms turned upwards, and suddenly he was covered, head, shoulders and outflung arms, with fluttering, feasting birds.

Someone nudged me and I started. It was time for final words. But I had no words and I 'd never been to a Brotherhood funeral and had no idea of a ritual. But they were waiting. I stood there alone, there was no microphone to support me, only the coffin before me upon the backs of its wobbly carpenter's horses.

I looked down into their sun-swept faces, digging for the words, and feeling a futility about it all and an anger. For this they gathered by the thousands. What were they waiting to hear? Why had they come? For what reason that was different from that which had the red-cheeked boy thrill at Clifton's falling to the earth? What did they want and what could they do? Why hadn't they come when they could have stopped it all?

"What are you waiting for me to tell you?" I shouted suddenly, my voice strangely crisp in on the windless air. "What good will it do? What if I say that this isn't a funeral, that it's a holiday celebration, that if you stick around the band will end up playing 'Damit-To-Hell the Fun's All Over'? Or do you expect to see some magic, the dead rise up and walk again? Go home, he's dead as he'll ever die. That's the end in the beginning and there's no encore. There'll be no miracles and there's no one here to preach a sermon. Go home, forget him. He's inside this box, newly dead. Go home and don't think about him. He's dead and you've got all you can do to think about you." I paused. They were whispering and looking upward.

"I've told you to go home," I shouted, "but you keep standing there. Don't you know it's hot out here in the sun? So what if you wait for what little I can tell you? Can I say in twenty minutes what was building twenty-one years and ended in twenty seconds? What are you waiting for, when all I can tell you is his name? And when I tell you, what will you know that you didn't know already, except, perhaps, his name?"

They were listening intently, and as though looking not at me, but at the pattern of my voice upon the air.

"All right, you do the listening in the sun and I'll try to tell you in the sun. Then you can go home and forget it. Forget it. His name was Clifton and they shot him down. His name was Clifton and he was tall and some folks thought him handsome. And though he didn't believe it, I think he was. His tight-rolled curls--or call them naps or kinks. He's dead, uninterested, and, except for a few young girls, it doesn't matter...Have you got it? Can you see him?Think of your brother, or your cousin John. His lips were thick with an upward curve at the corners. He often smiled. He had good eyes and a pair of fast hands, and he had a heart. He thought about things and he felt deeply. I won't call him noble because what's such a word to do with one of us? His name was Clifton, Tod Clifton, and, like any man, he was born of women to live awhile and fall and die. So that's his tale to the minute. His name was Clifton and for a while he lived among us and aroused a few hopes in the young manhood of man, and we who knew him loved him and he died. So why are you waiting? You've heard it all. Why wait for more, when all I do is repeat it?"

They stood; they listened. They gave no sign.

"Very well, so I'll tell you. His name was Clifton and he was young and he was a leader and when he fell there was a hole in the heel of his sock and when he stretched forward he seemed not as tall as when he stood. So he died; and we who loved him are gathered here to mourn him. It's as simple as that and as short as that. His name was Clifton and he was black and they shot him. Isn't that enough to tell? Isn't it all you need to know? Isn't that enough to appease your thirst for drama and send you home to sleep it off? Go take a drink and forget it. Or read it in *The Daily News*. His name was Clifton and they shot him, and I was there to see him fall. So I know it as I know it.

"Here are the facts. He was standing and he fell. He fell and he kneeled. He kneeled and he bled. He bled and he died. He fell in a heap like any man and his blood spilled out like any blood; *red* as any blood, wet as any blood and reflecting the sky and the buildings and the birds and the trees, or your face if you'd look into its dulling mirror--and it dried in the sun as blood dries. That's all. They spilled his blood and he bled. They cut him down and he died; the blood flowed on the walk in a pool, gleamed a while, and, after a while, became dull then dusty, then dried. That's the story and that's how it ended. It's an old story and there's been too much blood to excite you. Besides, it's only important when it fills the veins of a living man. Aren't you tired of such stories? Aren't you sick of the blood? Then why listen, why don't you go? It's hot out here. There's the odor of embalming fluid. The beer is cold in the taverns, the saxophones will be mellow at the Savoy; plenty good-laughing-lies will b e told in the barber shops and beauty parlors; and there'll be sermons in two hundred churches in the cool of the evening, and plenty of laughs at the movies. Go listen to 'Amos and Andy' and forget it. Here you have only the same old story. There's not even a young wife up here in red to mourn him. There's nothing to give you that good old frightened feeling. The story's too short and too simple. His name was Clifton, Tod Clifton, and he was unarmed, and his death was as senseless as his life was futile. He had struggled for Brotherhood on a hundred street corners and he thought it would make him more human, but he died like any dog in a road."

"All, all right," I called out, feeling desperate. It wasn't the way I wanted it to go, it wasn't political. Brother Jack probably wouldn't approve of it at all, but I had to keep going as I could go.

"Listen to me standing up here on this so-called mountain!" I shouted. "Let me tell it as it truly was! His name was Tod Clifton and he was full of illusions. He thought he was a man when he was only Tod Clifton. He was shot for a simple mistake of judgement and he bled and his blood dried and shortly the crowd trampled out the stains. It was a normal mistake which any are guilty. He thought he was a man and that men were not meant to be pushed around. But it was hot downtown and he forgot his history, he forgot the time and the place. He lost his hold on reality. There was a cop and a waiting audience but he was Tod Clifton and the cops are everywhere. The cop? What about him? He was a cop. A good citizen. But this cop had an itching finger and an eager ear for a word that rhymed with 'trigger', and when Clifton fell he had found it. The Police Special spoke its lines and the rhyme was completed. Just look around you. Look at what he made, look inside you and feel his awful power. It was perfectly natural. The blood ran like blood in a comic book killing, on a comic-book street in a comic-book town on a comic-book day in a comic-book world.

"Tod Clifton's one with the ages. But what's that to do with you in this heat under this veiled sun? Now he's part of history, and he has received his true freedom. Didn't they scribble his name on a standardized pad. His Race: colored! Religion: unknown, probably born Baptist. Place of birth: U.S. Some southern town. Next of kin: unknown. Address: unknown. Occupation: unemployed. Cause of death (be specific): resisting reality in the form of a .38 caliber revolver in the hands of the arresting officer, on Forty-second between the library and the subway int eh heat of the afternoon, of gunshot wounds received from three bullets, fired at three paces, one bullet entering the right ventricle of the heart, and lodging there, the other severing the spinal ganglia raveling downward to lodge in the pelvis, the other breaking through the back and traveling God knows where.

"Such was the short bitter life of Brother Tod Clifton. Now he's in this box with the bolts tightening down. He's in the box and we're in there with him, and when I've told you this you can go. It's dark in this box and it's crowded. It has a cracked ceiling and a clogged-up toilet in the hall. It has rats and roaches, and it's far, far too expensive a dwelling. The air is bad and it'll be cold this winter. Tod Clifton is crowded and he needs the room. 'Tell them to get out of the box,' that's what he would say if you could hear him. 'Tell them to get out of the box and go teach the cops to forget that rhyme. Tell them to teach them when they call you *nigger* to make a rhyme with *trigger* it makes the gun backfire.'

"So there you have it. In a few hours Tod Clifton will be cold bones in the ground, and don't be fooled, for these bones shall not rise again. You and I will still be int eh box. I don't know if Tod Clifton had a soul. I only know the ache that I feel in my heart, my sense of love, I don't know if you have a soul. I only know that you are men of flesh and blood, and that blood will spill and flesh grow cold. I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers. And I know too how we are labeled. So in the name of Brother Clifton beware of the triggers; go home, keep cool, stay safe away from the sun. Forget him. When he was alive there's only one thing left to tell and I've already told it. His name was Tod Clifton, he believed in Brotherhood, he aroused our hopes and he died."

I couldn't go on. Below, they were waiting, hands and handkerchiefs shading their eyes. A preacher stepped up and read something out of his Bible, and I stood looking at the crowd with a sense of failure. I had let it get away from me, had been unable to bring in the political issues. And they stood there sun-beaten and sweat-bathed, listening to me repeat what was known. Now the preacher had finished, and someone signaled the bandmaster and there was solemn music as the pallbearers carried the coffin down the spiraling stairs. The crowd stood still as we walked slowly through. I could feel the bigness of it and the unknowness of it and pent-up tension--whether of tears or anger, I couldn't tell. But as we walked through the and down the hill to the hearse, I could feel it. The crowd sweated and throbbed, and though it was silent, there were many things directed toward me through its eyes. At the curb were the hearse and a few cars, and in a few minute they wee loaded and the crowd was still standing, look on as we carried Tod Clifton away. And as I took one last look I saw not a crowd but the set faces of individual men and women.

-Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, Chapter 21. (Here's a link to the book if you want to read it.)

Ironically, at the end of Invisible Man there's a riot and it's just as absurd and random. The Marxists believe that they can use Clifton's death as a propaganda tool and get the black community to join them in revolution. (Which is one of the critiques throughout the book that the Marxists don't view people as people, ends in and of themselves, but as means to an end.) The Afro-Supremacists want to use it to establish a state where only they exist and everyone else is ousted, and the racists want to use it for their own ends to propel narratives about the black community in Harlem. They irony is that most people don't even know why they're rioting, they're just caught up in the violence. Police are fighting and arresting random people for no reason with no means to hold them off, and everyone is just indiscriminately killing one another with no order or reason. It's all purposeless, and Clifton's death was just a catalyst, an excuse for everyone to pursue their own agendas and narratives that have no basis in reality and only leads to destruction.

The point the main character ultimately gets to is the realization that no one can give him answers in life. Anyone that claims to is trying to sell you something. Every group that claims to speak for you or that wants to help "your kind," views you nothing more as a tool to their own political ends rather than a person in and of yourself. I suppose that's why I connect the book to the current times so much as I feel like everything in the modern era is just trying to deinvidualize you to the point where you're just some arbitrary amalgamation of labels and immutable characteristics than a person in and of yourself.

 

[Mr_Detective]

We already have a thread for this. Fuck off back to reddit and twitter with your virtue signaling bullshit. I am really close to my limit of tolerating stupidity of Americans now. At this point using logic doesn't work on you spoiled ignorant brats.

You dipshits never give a fuck about blacks killing each other unless it's done by a white man. The hypocrisy and ignorance is over the roof with this. You stand with your black buddies? Cool, bruh! Now go sign up for a job at the police department in Chicago.

 

[Tlos]

@Mr_Detective how does the boot leather taste?

 

[Mr_Detective]

@Tlos Try harder.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

I hate that this is still a problem in 2020

 

[libbies]

black lives matter!

 

[Zephyrus]

@Mr_Detective
That post was nothing but inflammatory insults and had no substance. Please do not make low-effort insult posts. Thanks.

 

[goofydude]

Hmm... I guess I'll throw my 2 cents in.

Actually, no I'll just do 1 cent since nobody will actually listen unless they think I'm agreeing with them. so rather than explain anything I'll just do the bare basics.
BLM - should have been BLMT/BLM2 (get it? black lives matter too? actually sends the message better imo)
ALM - Better slogan but honestly, do they actually go out to protest when a black/asian/hispanic/white etc. person dies/is killed in injustice? or is it just to protest BLM?

It seems like... wait that would probably be another cent so nevermind.

 

[Tamerlane]

I don't like the framing of BLM because it's meant to paint any opposition to it as intrinsically bad. It's Orwellian in the most literal sense.

Keep in mind that BLM is an organization, and that if you oppose the politics or the methods of the organization whilst still believing that police brutality is a problem in the United States, you'll be slammed with the "racist" label.

If I criticize a group's actions or methods, it doesn't matter what they call themselves, it does not vindicate them of all responsibility. If I criticize the Ministry of Love or the Ministry of Truth, it does not mean I hate love or truth. Just as if I criticize the Patriot Act, it does not mean I hate America or if I criticize Antifa, it does not mean I love Fascism.

It's a rhetorical red herring that's meant entirely to misrepresent arguments and act as character assassination, rather than actually allowing for proper discussion to take place.

I typically avoid labels and movements in general anyways, so it's not really significant. I'm not affiliated with any political party even. It's not that I don't think black lives do matter, it's that I don't want organizations who work for profit to try and market themselves as the sole way to solve issues and if you don't support their organization, you're morally reprehensible.

 

[jasty]

Black Lives Matter does have a misleading name, it should have been called Stop Police Brutality or something. The name makes it sound like they are all about saving black lives but of the 8000 black people that were killed in 2019 only 9 of them were unarmed black people killed by cops. The movement ignores the other 99.8% of black lives that were killed.

 

[ribbitribbitsaga]

You needed a movement to finally realize black lives obviously mattered. Its very condescending tbh, it just exposes the fact that many of you are not fit to talk about these matters. Same people who fund Planned Parenthood who's goal is to get rid of blacks and still is. Many of you do not know who Marcus Garvey is. Blacks kill more of themselves everyday its just a fact. Good thing more blacks are waking up even though some are hotep but who cares. this virtue signaling is useless at the end of the day.

 

[Tamerlane]

The reason why it's called that is because it's as hyperbolic, inflammatory, and emotionally-charged. It's the same issue I have with "pro-life/prochoice" because it's directly appealing to emotion instead of logic or reason, which rubs me the wrong way. @jasty

From my understanding, he's like Preston Garvey but replace the whole "liberty and freedom" shtick with "racism and afro-supremacy" and you'll get the picture. "Another settlement needs you help!" @ribbitribbitsaga

Joking aside, I think a lot of the issues in the Black community can be addressed by focusing on improving their economic situation, reducing fatherlessness, and legalizing/decriminalizing certain drugs that disproportionately discriminate against black individuals. (https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rdusda.pdf)

These three are kinda interconnected, but poverty tends to lead to drug use, which leads to arrests. Men are more likely to commit certain kinds of crime, which will lead to more frequent arrests, as well as more children being born out of wedlock, which will mean that children will be raised in single-parent households with reduced income and a lack of a consistent father figure, which is especially bad for young men. (It's this similar line of reasoning that I use to justify the rights of gay people to adopt because-all other factors being equal-being raised in a loving, multi-income house will be superior to foster care or the alternatives, but that's unrelated.) Poverty + a lack of parental care tends to lead to more juvenile delinquency and drug crime and thus the cycle begins anew.

The way to minimize this would be to make it so certain drugs like Cannabis are legal and more extreme drugs like Cocaine and Meth are decriminalized and instead lead to rehabilitation and therapeutic means of getting people off the drugs and becoming more productive and healthier. This would lead to less prison sentences and less cases of young black men and women being raised in single parent households.

Other solutions include removing prison and arrest quotas, reduce the privatization of prisons, and longer periods of time to train police officers to ensure more training and understanding in the use of force, as well as regular internal checks for potentially harmful behavior.

Keep in mind that what I'm mentioning here doesn't reflect the black population as a whole, but a small but significant subset that is facing these issues consistently and across generations. Whilst this is not a perfect solution by any means and would take a long period of time and depend on certain actions being taken by a large amount of individuals in the black community, it is significantly better as an option as opposed to other options.