How many of the statements on the "in this house we believe" sign do you agree with?

[Big Abraham]

I disagree with all of them (sane, don't believe in simplistic platitudes and meaningless aphorisms, etc.)

[Big Abraham]

I disagree with all of them (sane, don't believe in simplistic platitudes and meaningless aphorisms, etc.)

Disagreeing with Black Lives Matter? Have you just gone completely mask-off at this point?

The fact that you capitalized that statement shows exactly what I mean

[Big Abraham]

I disagree with all of them (sane, don't believe in simplistic platitudes and meaningless aphorisms, etc.)

Disagreeing with Black Lives Matter? Have you just gone completely mask-off at this point?

The fact that you capitalized that statement shows exactly what I mean

You know exactly what it means, so why don't you explain why you disagree with the movement?

I've explained my position on this elsewhere (it pretty much boils down to substituting race in place of socio-economics), but this thread is about statements, not the movements behind them. Besides, I highly doubt you're really interested in or open to hearing my takes anyway.

[Big Abraham]

I disagree with all of them (sane, don't believe in simplistic platitudes and meaningless aphorisms, etc.)

Disagreeing with Black Lives Matter? Have you just gone completely mask-off at this point?

The fact that you capitalized that statement shows exactly what I mean

You know exactly what it means, so why don't you explain why you disagree with the movement?

I've explained my position on this elsewhere (it pretty much boils down to substituting race in place of socio-economics), but this thread is about statements, not the movements behind them. Besides, I highly doubt you're really interested in or open to hearing my takes anyway.

I'm sincerely interested in your position here. Do you seriously believe that nothing is just about racism? There has to be some underlying economic factor?

No, my position is a bit more nuanced than that.

The "generational wealth gap" that is observed between black and white families (and Indians, Asians, etc.) is a legacy of the fact that, prior to the Civil War, the vast majority of blacks were enslaved and thus totally dependent on their masters for all forms of sustenance. After emancipation, there were few opportunities for freedmen to receive gainful industrial employment in the cities (this would only happen later, but obviously there were several impediments there as well), and thus the vast majority continued life in poverty. Due to racial tensions that were exploited by the wealthy planter class, poor whites usually sided against their poor black neighbors by taking the side of capital, thus enabling the re-assertion of white supremacy that followed Reconstruction, coupled with lynchings, etc. Now, for the many who did live the South to find factory jobs in Chicago, Detroit, and other large cities, they essentially had to form clusters of urban ghetto neighborhoods that were, of course, low-income. (This phenomenon isn't unique to black Americans of course. We see the same thing happening with nearly every ethnic group that migrated to some urban area in large numbers.) This of course has all had the effect of concentrating poverty in specific "inner city" areas that, of course, have been a breeding ground for violent crime.

Now, getting on the central claim of Black Lives Matter. The movement was essentially founded in reaction to Michael Brown and other high-profile incidents of white police officers killing blacks. This is doubtless a problem, but it gives only a tiny slice of the picture. For one, when we look at police brutality in general, we see that the real correlation (both globally and in the United States) is on the basis of socio-economic factors rather than race alone. Take a look, for example, at the countries with the highest rates of police brutality (defined as deaths caused by law enforcement). Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Jamaica are all at or near the top. If you look at the countries with the highest homicide rate, we see El Salvador, Jamaica, Honduras, and Venezuela all near the top. This, of course, makes sense. The most crime-ridden communities are bound to have the most interactions with the police, which escalates violence and increases the likelihood of police brutality. All of these countries have a high percentage of the population living in poverty as well. Which is why when we look at the U.S. cities with the top violent and property crime rates (St. Louis, Spokane etc.), we see the highest rate of police brutality. Of course, said brutality is experience by blacks at a higher rate than whites, but as we know, violent and property crimes within the black community are also much higher than in the white community (the whole "despite being 13%" meme does have some truth to it), so you have to account for this as well.

Now, when you do a class analysis, you get results that aren't as readily detectable in media coverage. If you look at such factors like education and income, we see that the highest-poverty areas have a police killing rate of 6.4 per million while the lowest-poverty areas have a police killing rate of 1.8 per million, a 3.5-fold difference. This same discrepancy exists by race as well—whites in the poorest areas have a police killing rate of 7.9 per million, compared to 2 per million for whites in the least-poor areas. Blacks in the poorest areas have a police killing rate of 12.3 per million, compared to 6.7 per million for blacks in the least-poor areas. What this means is that, white people living in the poorest areas are more likely to be killed by the police than blacks living in the least-poor areas. Now, this is even without controlling for the factor of overall crime rates within each racial group (as we know, there are disproportionately higher crime rates within the black community), which does quite a great deal to establish that class is a more important indicator here than race is. Is it the sole indicator? No, of course not. Obviously there are reasons why the crime rate is so high within the black community (and no, it's not because "they're genetically more disposed to criminality" or anything like that — I'm not a "race realist"), and class isn't the answer in every case. But BLM almost totally ignores the class-based reasons behind this discrepancy. I've never once seen them campaign on behalf of poor whites who have been the victims of police brutality, despite the fact that they still actually make up a majority of police killings. Case in point, look at the article I cited earlier. After you adjust for socio-economic differences, Latinos have a lower police killing rate than whites, which is probably attributable to the fact that the average annual homicide victimization rate among Latinos is considerably closer than that of whites than to blacks.

So, in general, yes there is an underlying an economic factor which is sometimes more obvious and sometimes more latent. At any rate, the movement itself is misguided because none of these issues BLM seeks to address (police brutality, etc.) are limited to black people, even if they do experience it at higher rates. The fact they experience it at higher rates is due to the concentration of poverty and the lack of generational wealth, which had led to a large increase in crime rates and gang activity, which obviously aspects of which do have a racial history, but still are ultimately decided by a combination of socio-economic factors rather than their race alone. The case in point being that urban white people living in poverty are far more likely to experience police brutality than middle-class or well-off black people, especially those livings in suburbs.

[Big Abraham]

I disagree with all of them (sane, don't believe in simplistic platitudes and meaningless aphorisms, etc.)

Disagreeing with Black Lives Matter? Have you just gone completely mask-off at this point?

The fact that you capitalized that statement shows exactly what I mean

You know exactly what it means, so why don't you explain why you disagree with the movement?

I've explained my position on this elsewhere (it pretty much boils down to substituting race in place of socio-economics), but this thread is about statements, not the movements behind them. Besides, I highly doubt you're really interested in or open to hearing my takes anyway.

I'm sincerely interested in your position here. Do you seriously believe that nothing is just about racism? There has to be some underlying economic factor?

No, my position is a bit more nuanced than that.

-snip-

I do agree that the issue of police brutality in America is quite complicated and the BLM does not fully address aspects of economic conditions, but to disagree with BLM for not focusing on everything related to police brutality is odd.

From the perspective of black communities in urban cores that started BLM, what they see in their day to day lives is the statistic regarding high numbers of police killings of African Americans, and they care deeply about that, seeking improvement of their own communities through police accountability. Sure they fail to account for the poor relations that police have with various poor white communities, but that's not the point of their movement--their point is to bring light to the injustices in their own communities, where race certainly is a factor. And that's all there is to it; they aren't actively denying that other communities have injustices or anything.

Now if BLM were to come against various other movements like StopAsianHate, FightFor15, or even just general unionization movements, my opinion of BLM would decrease, but that's not the case.  

That's a large part of my disagreement with them. Firstly, if focusing on the "injustices within their own communities" is the standard, police brutality shouldn't be seen as the foremost concern, let alone the root problem of anything, considering the disproportionality there stems from the higher rates of violent crime and like I said, ultimately, the concentration of poverty. Secondly, I don't agree with any movement that focuses on putting the problems of their race first and foremost. If you want to address the problem of police brutality (a problem which, I believe, has been exaggerated at the expense of other, more serious, problems), then let's focus on policies aimed to reduce police brutality generally speaking (as you mention, police accountability and the like). If this is an issue that disproportionately affects black communities, shouldn't that then mean that black communities will be disproportionately positively affected by anti-police brutality measures? You could apply this same standard to many other issues that are often give a "race-only" angle (such as things related to so-called "white privilege" and the like). I don't see how it's helpful to focus on any issue as it pertains to only one race, especially after controlling for crime statistics by racial group. Focusing on solidarity with other groups to address a problem is much more effective, and honestly more noble, than just making it all about your in-group, especially when it comes to something as arbitrary as race to begin with.

Besides, if they are only going to focus on an issue as it relates to their community, why should they expect any help from others whom the issue also affects? I don't see too many poor whites clamoring their support for BLM (usually it's middle-class whites living in suburbs who put in these kind of signs anyway, because virtue signaling is always easier and it doesn't require any effort on their part - ditto goes for major corporations), because after all, they haven't really been given an incentive to help, given the other side hasn't tried to bridge the gap. Poverty affects blacks more than whites; but which is better: a universal program to eliminate poverty or reduce it as much as possible nationwide, or a race-based program which only focuses on reducing or eliminating poverty within one ethnic group? The universal policy is going to win every time. Here's another example: the opioid crisis much more disproportionately affects whites (almost all of whom are lower-class, impoverished, etc.) than it does blacks. Should there be such a movement called "White Lives Matter" to focus on addressing this "injustice within their own community," or should there just be a general attempt to help all of the victims of the crisis fully recover, and address the root cause of the predicament to begin with, regardless of the color of their skin?

I understand the black community has more attachments to their racial group then their class group, but maybe that's a large part of the problem. It's the same phenomenon I described in my post that allowed poor whites in the postbellum South to express a greater attachment to their status as a white man than their common cause with the poor blacks. Class consciousness is what is needed, and BLM is only further sewing the seeds of discord in this regard.