Why was there even a need for black people to say that their lives mattered? Because it appeared that black lives didn't matter. Black people were being killed in police shootings in situations that, to the ordinary person, didn't seem to justify a shooting. There was a perception that, to the police, black lives didn't matter, that it took little or no provocation for a black person to be killed by the police, where in similar situations involving white people, there would be no shooting. Responding with "All Lives Matter" is at best, tone deaf, or a dismissal of legitimate concerns, or perhaps just plain ignorant. It insinuates that the black community doesn't have anything to complain about, denies that there is any difference in the way white and black people are treated by the police. It's white people telling black people how they ought to think and feel about a situation that black people experience every day, but white only hear about, if that.
Another common response, especially after a police officer is killed is two fold. First, is to shout "Blue Lives Matter" and equate the killing of a police officer by a criminal with the killing by the police of a black person. As the son and brother of New York City police officers I can appreciate the danger that is the daily experience of a police officer. It is painful when I hear of anyone in law enforcement being killed or wounded in the line of duty. The difference however, is you expect criminals to act like criminals. A criminal killing a police officer isn't a representative of the governement, tasked with protecting the community. We expect dirtbags to be dirtbags, we shouldn't expect the police to be criminals, we shouldn't accept it as normal that a cop kills an innocent person. As terrible as it is when police are killed, they knew that it was a possibility, they signed up for the danger. A black man, on the other hand, didn't sign up, didn't volunteer, to put himself of jeopardy of being killed by a cop.
The other common response is to excuse the police officer's actions in a variety of ways. One class of reasoning involves intentional action by the victim, running away in particular, or not obeying commands. Unless someone is armed and it seems likely that they're going to shoot someone, why would running away constitute a reason for lethal force? Many jurisdictions prohibit their officers from engaging in high speed chases, so at least in those cases, they assume that they'll catch up with him some time later. Why not the same with foot chases? There are other situations where someone is acting "in a threatening manner". I could almost buy this. Someone charging at you with a knife, or just waving it around, can get to you pretty quickly, and if someone shoots at you, it's pretty impossible to get out of the way. I understand that preemptive action is sometimes required. The problem that I have with the quick draw tactics though, is that in a lot of these cases is that it seems like cops are sometimes willing to talk to white people waving guns around and talk to them, while black people get shot without much chance to talk.
Then there's unintentional action. A cop shoots Philando Castile is shot while reaching for his license that the cop told him to reach for. Tamir Rice is shot playing with a toy gun. It seems like the threshold for "fearing for one's life" is a lot lower when the person is black than when he's white. The fact that the police officer may have sincerely thought that he was in danger is cold comfort to the family of the dead man. While I certainly want the police to be safe, I also want people, in particular black people to be safe from the police. When the priority is the safety of the police and not the safety of the community, the community is going to suffer.
A third rejoinder is that if someone wasn't breaking the law, then they wouldn't have been shot. In this case we're not necessarily looking at the traffic stops that result in shootings, but someone who is actively breaking the law, or is suspected of breaking the law, and is shot for one reason or another. It isn't the place of the individual police officer to serve as judge and jury, let alone executioner. There's a reason that we have courts and judges. Running a stop light isn't a capital offense. Shoplifting isn't a capital offense. Talking shit to a cop isn't a capital offense.
The militarization is also involved in this. Black people protest and the armored vehicles and cops in body armor and military style weapons are out in force, tossing tear gas canisters. White Supremacists show up armed for civil war, one of them even shooting a gun at a black man, and the police stand aside. The photo at the top of this post kind of says it all.
Some have tried to dismiss Black Lives Matter activists and categorize them as "terrorists", "thugs" or anti-police. There is certainly a broad range of tactics and opinions within the umbrella of Black Lives Matter. Some have accused them of being anti-police. Surely there are some within the larger group that are; certainly understandable if you think the police kill your young men with impunity. And there have been incidents of vandalism and looting that took place in conjunction with Black Lives Matter protests. But, despite any of this, Black Lives Matter is an idea. An idea that you can't just shoot black people because of a broken tail light, or because a cop gets nervous. An idea that says that black lives aren't better, that they aren't the only ones that matter, but that stands up and says that the situation where they don't matter is over.
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