Exactly!
While the racism in this country is increasing, and that is worrying, I strongly believe that the vast majority are not racist.
It is this vast majority that BLM would want to convert if it is to achieve its goals. It could do this by 1) Gathering attention to the problems, 2) Stating the problems accurately so it can’t be shot down by enemies, 3) Engage with discussion with those that may disagree but are willing to listen.
BLM has only succeeded on the first issue.
I’m okay with bringing up skin color or race or gender, sexual identity, or any other “difference” if it means pointing out the inequality. How can you not bring up it up if you’re wanting and working to solve it? We aren’t the same but that shouldn’t prevent us from being treated “lesser than”. Personally, I don’t chose to see that as exclusionary just pragmatic about what is.
“It could do this by 1) Gathering attention to the problems, 2) Stating the problems accurately so it can’t be shot down by enemies, 3) Engage with discussion with those that may disagree but are willing to listen.”
You don’t think that has been done ad nauseam over the years? To what affect?
This was a student reporter in a student paper. One should not expect much.
Well, they certainly are misguided students, but from the article:
The college’s BLM chapter claimed credit for the protest which makes the idea that this was a “nasty trick” laughable. If you go to their Facebook page, there is an hour long video of the protest. These people really want to overturn the Constitution.
The Inside HigherEd article on the protest has a link to the facebook video.
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/10/05/aclu-speaker-shouted-down-william-mary
Ask James Meredith or Dr. King.
More broadly, are you really going to take the position that race relations have not improved over time?
But that is not the point under discussion. The point started from your premise that saying “All Lives Matter” was bad, but saying “Black Lives Matter” was good, and @alh’s defense of the use of “white privilege” as an argumentary tactic.
I guess the bigger question is why have they improved?
@colfac92
“Person A: “Black lives matter”
Person B, in response: “All lives matter”
Person A then says: “So you agree? black lives matter””
Person B: " all lives matter including black" then B asks A: “Do you agree others’ lives besides black matter?”
Person A: ?
bizarre logic bizarre world nowadays
Ta-Nehisi Coates
apologies for the misspelling in post #35
They have improved, but are certainly not where they should be.
When everyone is truly treated equally regardless of religion, race, gender, sexuality, etc. etc. then we “can stop defining people based on their” + x, y, z.
@newHSmom, I would certainly hope that Person A acknowledges that all lives matter.
Certainly, as a stand-alone statement “All lives matter” is an innocuous truism that hopefully everyone recognizes and agrees with.
But in the real world, context and connotation can blur the straightforward meanings of words and phrases, and the connotations can sometimes become dominant over original definitions. I once described a woman who had never married nor had any children as a “spinster.” One of my colleagues took great offense to my use of that word (she too would be considered a spinster under the dictionary definition), because apparently there is a negative stereotype or connotation associated with that word (I didn’t know).
The phrase “black lives matter” arose from the context of unarmed black people being killed in disproportionate numbers by police.
The phrase “all lives matter,” as innocuous, true, and well-meaning as it is on it’s own, only came to prominence as a reaction to, and apparent counter-argument to, the statement “black lives matter.” Used in that context, it sure seems to have a strong racist connotation.
In the scenario Person B could have avoided coming across as racist confrontationalist by responding as follows:
Person A: “Black lives matter”
Person B: “Yes, black lives do matter; all lives matter”
Person A: “Yes, all lives matter, including black lives…”
BLM started as a movement against police brutality, discrimination and disproportional use of force against black suspects. This understandable and easy to support. I have no problems with the slogan “Black lives matter” and I don’t think “All lives matter” is an appropriate response to it because it purposefully negates the fight against racism.
However, the official platform of BLM includes statements that go far beyond these and that I cannot approve. For example, free education and guaranteed minimal income for all black and only black people. This looks designed to worsen the split between blacks and everybody else in the society. Same goes for the eloquent articles of Ta-Nehisi Coates. He chooses to fight not against racism, not against discrimination but against “whiteness” in general, and he is intentionally and provocatively pitting black people against everybody else. Same goes for all the talk of “white privilege”. People behind this don’t seek the end of racism and racial reconciliation, they seek the racial war where the blacks will be the victors and white the defeated. Only it’s not going to happen this way, and in the next racial war everybody will lose sorely.
How do we feel about the decision by Harvard not to allow Chelsea Manning to speak? Is that also a deplorable and bizarre violation of the first amendment?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/14/us/chelsea-manning-harvard-fellow-cia.html
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/9/18/miranda-ideology-elcipses-truth/
Person B: “That’s basically what I said”
Person A: “Yeah but it’s racist”
Person B: “That doesn’t even make sense”
Person A: “Well to a racist, it wouldn’t make sense”
Person B: walks away
Not recognizing that “All Lives Matter” is a direct racist counterpoint to BLM requires that someone ignore the context in which it started to be used.
@fractalmstr your continuation of the scenario doesn’t make any sense, because what person B said would likely NOT be considered racist by person A, because person B did not say just solely “all lives matter;” instead they explicitly acknowledged that black lives do matter.
While more extreme types of racism are uncommon, lower level racism is probably more common*. Someone may not find dealing with others of a different race in normal business interactions objectionable, but may want to move to a different neighborhood if “too many” people of a different race move in, for example. Or s/he may not find it objectionable if police misconduct occurs more often with people of some races than others, or that some people who call the police are racist enough that police are called more often on people of some races than others, even when there is no reason why the subject’s actions are suspicious.
*Not just among white people, although the aggregation of actions by individually powerless white people has more of an effect than the aggregation of actions by individually powerless non-white people, due to numbers. Note also that people can be racist against their own race, though that is less common.
Depends on what time frame. Improved since the 1940s, no doubt. Improved since 2014, unlikely.
Nationally, the US is probably seeing an echo of what happened in California in the 1990s, when the “threat” of white people no longer being the majority became visible, with attendant rise in racism, at least in state politics. The racism eventually subsided after the state became a no-majority state around 2000. The echo nationally is that more recent surveys indicate that most white people are worried about the changing ethnic makeup of the US, which the extremists try to appeal to with chants like “we will not be replaced”.
I give BLM full credit for raising the profile of the issue far above what it was before.
I’ll take it, @hebeglebe! 
I think Dr. King would be more than a little disappointed to find where things stand in 2017. If we’ve truly progressed in the past few decades, there wouldn’t be so many hot and bothered by the BLM phrase. I think we’ve regressed recently with the willingness of white supremacists and sympathizers to be more vocal and visible. In some ways, perhaps much hasn’t changed, at least in the numbers. They’ve just become emboldened to come out of the woodwork but they were there all along. Is it easier to fight a prejudice you can see and hear? Not sure.