BLM is not about white people, so if you feel like you don't matter or you're being left out because of this movement - if you're someone who says, "but every life matters" - that's what is called "white privilege".
If you fall into this category, and I did at first, try putting the word "too" after "black lives matter". That's what BLM is about.
Right. But it feels like a straw man. It’s arguing against a position which almost no one holds. Who says that black lives don’t matter?
I provided the stats above, it’s incredibly rare that unarmed black people are killed by police in the US. The George Floyd incident was indisputably awful but the people who did it are in jail - no laws need to change, what they did was already illegal. And the stats just don’t bear out this idea that a systematically racist police force are killing black people for no reason other than their race.
Obviously I don’t know what it’s like to be black in the UK, but my feeling is that the privileges I have enjoyed - and I certainly have - are largely because of my family’s affluence.
I was writing this in response to some comments that were made earlier in the thread - primarily thorks comments. I often here people say things like that - "all lives matter", and that comes from a place of privilege as it misses the point of BLM.
You mention that you have been privileged in your life because you have money. This is not the same as "white privilege". There are plenty of wealthy black people.
White privilege is being advantaged solely because your skin is white. nothing to do with being rich or poor.
Take the bird watcher example:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2020/06/05/people-called-police-this-black-birdwatcher-so-many-times-that-he-posted-custom-signs-explain-his-hobby/An educated black man who watches birds as a hobby evidently gave some poor lady a big enough scare that she called 911 on him - and she wasn't the first to do so.
This man's only crime was having black skin. If he had white skin, guaranteed nobody would have thought twice. This is what white privilege is - not having to worry you'll be judged or profiled because your skin is white.
It is generally young black men who are dressed in a certain way who are stopped. Because they tick all the boxes:
- Young
- Black
- Male
- Dressed in a certain way
Why are people picking out that person’s race and declaring that as the only factor and therefore it’s motivated by race and racism?
I disagree. If you have "young,
white, male, dressed in a certain way", I think you will be stopped less than if you are black. Doesn't mean you won't draw suspicion, but not as quickly. However, I don't have any proof of this.
And it was 14 unarmed black men killed by police last year. Hardly indicative of a systematically racist police force just itching to gun down black people at every opportunity
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police-shootings-2019/
Although I don't think police are "itching to gun down black people at every opportunity", I do think those statistics are not giving the entire picture. There are far more white people in this country than black people, so statistically, there would be more white people shot down by police. The fact that the numbers are actually close is telling that the percentage of black people shot is higher than that for whites.
Edit:
@AATW, I re-read your post and I think I misunderstood. Are you saying the entire BLM movement is a strawman? If so, I think I see what you mean, but this is also exactly what I'm trying to say - People aren't explicitly saying "black lives don't matter", yet society treats them like they don't matter. Take my example of the bird watcher. If she had actually saw the man as a human being, rather than a black man, she might not have been so scared. No, there are no more laws that explicitly discriminate and we are all legally equal, it doesn't mean we are practically speaking because society implicitly biases against black people. So by saying "Black Lives Matter", that isn't an argument against people who say "black lives don't matter", it's a message for people to wake up and realize there is a problem.