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"Blue lives matter" is inherently racist, because it was created to counter "Black lives matter."
There are many cases of police harrassing, attacking and occasionally killing innocent blacks. Plus of treating suspected blacks much worse, with brutality, attacks and sometimes death. This is what "Black live matter" is about.
Why say "Blue lives matter?" We already say it by giving them guns and a lot of power. Plus we make a huge deal out of any of them getting killed. So there's no reason to yell "Blue lives matter." Ever. Except to express racism, to say that we need not make Black lives matter.
The whole point of "Black lives matter" is that adopting this as true would be very new to many parts of American society. Adopting it would mean that a lot of police would need to behave differently.
It's similar for "All lives matter." It's obvious and is the foundation for a lot of our culture. So why say it? People only said it to counter "Black lives matter." As a slogan, it's only said by racists, whether they're overtly racist or because they choose to ignore the well documented facts about systemic racism against blacks in many facets of American life.
Ignoring the racism outside the police creates a culture that tolerates violent racism by police. With Beonna Taylor, the police thought they had a good reason for violence. They had a no-knock warrant and then they were shot at. But the judge was wrong to issue the warrant, according to well established laws. But it continues because of racism. The police were at the wrong apartment due to racism. If it had been an apartment in a white neighborhood, they probably wouldn't have made the mistake. There was also racism in the callousness and automatic CYA that let the police off with no consequences.
Saying "all lives matter" says we don't need to focus on black lives or racism. "All lives matter" is racist.
Today, saying you "support the police" means to a lot of people that you look the other way on abuse of power, even unjust killing, and when they cover up abuses. On the one hand, I should support the police because many get paid little to do a difficult and sometimes dangerous job. On the other, I shouldn't. There's not a large city in America that doesn't have these abuses. I live in Mountain View, California, with 76,000 people in the heart of liberal, educated Silicon Valley. We had a drunk off-duty officer beat up a Hispanic man outside a restaurant and then others in the department successfully covered it up. It happens everywhere.
Why don't we hear "Hispanic lives matter" when they are also often mistreated by police? Or "GLBT lives matter"? Because this is about Black lives being mistreated, not a competition for who can say what matters. These people don't make it about them out of respect. The kind of respect that "Blue" and "All" people lack.
Sep 25, 2020