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Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

bbc.com

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Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#91

Post by triceratops »

eplanit wrote: post #45
hairofadog wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what point you're making, but I have noticed that "google Chicago shootings" has become something of a racist dog whistle, so if that's not your intent there may be better phrasing with which to make it.

The point is black lives seem to matter only if taken by a white police officer. The BLM movement is quite silent regarding other black deaths.

> The BLM movement is quite silent regarding other black deaths

There's an expectation that the police will investigate regular crimes and bring the criminals to justice. For crimes committed by police, there's no such guarantee. Why is it wrong for a movement to focus on watching the watchmen?

In any case, what are protests and rallies going to do against gang violence? You need social programs to keep kids out of gangs, provide poor families additional assistance, improve living standards and so on.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#92

Post by Tycho »

vb234 wrote: post #58
DrNosferatu wrote: post #12

"Inside the newsroom some of them would say hello or nod or even speak to me but if they saw me outside the building they would pretend they didn't know me". When you experience this as an immigrant (so the ignoring party knows you have a different nationality) is it generally racism? - What do you think?

I’ve been living in the US for 21 years and whenever I experience this I assume it is racism and/or prejudice. I cannot confront them so I have no way of knowing their exact reasons for doing this. Maybe I’m just socially awkward and I don’t quite know how to play native in this country. It didn’t bother me much until the last couple of years. I now have a young daughter who’s friends with a lot of the other kids in…

Since it’s generally harder to recognise people of other ethnicities, maybe they either mistakingly think it’s not you (without other context to help them), or think it might be but don’t want to take the risk of offending a stranger.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#93

Post by jolux »

will4274 wrote: post #75
InitialLastName wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of them said, 'We don't cover black murders because those are cheap deaths,' If anyone ever wondered what attitude triggered the slogan "Black Lives Matter"...

Your comment hides a lot of depth and comes off as a bit flippant to me. BLM was largely triggered by cop-on-black killings. Civilian black-on-black killings (like those referred to in the quote) continue to get fairly little attention, even from the BLM organizations themselves. Indeed, this is a fairly common conservative criticism of BLM - that it's an anti-police movement, not an anti-black murder movement. (This…

The fact that police often threaten underpolicing of black communities in response to protests goes a long way to explaining why cops killing black people and people who aren’t cops killing black people are related. I wouldn’t say the movement is ignorant of this connection at all, it’s a big part of the argument. To oversimplify, black communities are faced with a Hobson’s choice of violence at the hands of police or violence at the hands of criminals. White communities for the most part can trust that the police will fight crime in their communities without subjecting them to violence in the course of it.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#94

Post by jaywalk »

FactolSarin wrote: post #85
will4274 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment hides a lot of depth and comes off as a bit flippant to me. BLM was largely triggered by cop-on-black killings. Civilian black-on-black killings (like those referred to in the quote) continue to get fairly little attention, even from the BLM organizations themselves. Indeed, this is a fairly common conservative criticism of BLM - that it's an anti-police movement, not an anti-black murder movement. (This…

Holding police accountable for unreasonable killings is not being anti-police.

And if that's all BLM did, far fewer people would have any issue with them. But you're simply ignoring reality if you really think that they limit themselves to unreasonable killings.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#95

Post by will4274 »

darksaints wrote: post #89
will4274 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the black homicide rate is really high. It can be a bit easy to forget this, caught in the abstract. The movement isn't called "the police shouldn't kill people" - it's called "black lives matter". I'd expect a movement named "white lived matter" to focus on all-up issues for white people. > black people are twice as likely to be killed than white people by our murderous police. Among young people (18-45), bl…

If you want to dig past the abstract, crime is far more predictable by poverty rate than it is, or ever has been, by race. In fact, crime rates among poor whites are virtually indistinguishable from those among poor blacks. But the racially segmented crime rates are higher because black poverty rates are higher. And why is that? Ask any sociologist and they'll have the same answer: systemic racism. This shows up in h…

> In fact, crime rates among poor whites are virtually indistinguishable from those among poor blacks.

This is untrue. From my prior research, virtually every analysis concludes the opposite - that income alone cannot explain the difference in crime rate between black and white Americans. Most studies show income as 30-60% of that regression, which is huge, but when comparing similar income brackets, African Americans have a higher crime rate than whites in almost all of them under $100k. To cover the full difference, it's necessary to bring in other factors (in particular, the rate of single parent households). Please cite a source for the claim you have made or retract it.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#96

Post by klyrs »

will4274 wrote: post #76
darksaints wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood this point. White people are mostly murdered by other white people. Black people are mostly murdered by other black people. This should be obvious...most murderers know their victims, and they know them well enough to have a motive to kill them. When a police officer wrongfully kills a white person, we don't go around telling white people that they shouldn't care about police murders because mor…

Because the black homicide rate is really high. It can be a bit easy to forget this, caught in the abstract. The movement isn't called "the police shouldn't kill people" - it's called "black lives matter". I'd expect a movement named "white lived matter" to focus on all-up issues for white people. > black people are twice as likely to be killed than white people by our murderous police. Among young people (18-45), bl…

This is all a whataboutism. You don't like the slogan because you want it to be about one thing, but the movement is focused on another thing.

But, would you believe that the two things are related? Black people have been subject to overpolicing since, well, police forces were formed expressly to recapture escaped slaves. The police have had an enduring impact on black populations, ensuring that black people are significantly overrepresented in prisons. Poverty is a spiral, and folks with a criminal history can't get honest work so they return to crime. Kids without good role models are apt to end up in jail before they're adults. Extreme levels of black on black crime are a natural, I'd say unavoidable consequence of the circumstances. And the police, the courts, the prisons, maintain the hedges of that spiral into poverty.

If you've been listening to BLM activists and have only heard anti-police rhetoric, and missed the points about systemic poverty, and the entire remainder of the criminal justice system, then either you haven't been listening very carefully, or you've been getting your information from a biased source that's filtering the message down to what they want you to hear.

Black on black crime is absolutely, horribly, heartwrenchingly, problematic. It harms our entire society. But you don't fix that with a stronger police force. We've tried that. You fix that by addressing the inequities across the board, starting with the criminal justice system.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#97

Post by cherrycherry98 »

DrNosferatu wrote: post #12

"Inside the newsroom some of them would say hello or nod or even speak to me but if they saw me outside the building they would pretend they didn't know me". When you experience this as an immigrant (so the ignoring party knows you have a different nationality) is it generally racism? - What do you think?

This assumes a whole lot. How do you know for certain that the person is treating you differently from others because of your background? Depending on the person and the prevailing culture it may be perfectly normal to more or less ignore someone outside the office. If you're constantly on the lookout for some nefarious activity you may start to interpret it where it doesn't actually exist.

I've definitely done the same and have had the same done to me even with people who I am rather friendly with in the office (across all identity characteristics). I'm more introverted than most and generally shy away from a lot of social interactions unless I have to or would obviously come across as impolite. The prevailing culture in my location is to generally leave people alone outside the office as engaging in smalltalk can come across as being annoying when they probably just want to get where they're going, indulge in their phone, or are mentally preoccupied with what they should do for dinner that evening.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#98

Post by kbenson »

jaywalk wrote: post #94
FactolSarin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holding police accountable for unreasonable killings is not being anti-police.

And if that's all BLM did, far fewer people would have any issue with them. But you're simply ignoring reality if you really think that they limit themselves to unreasonable killings.

Like any and every popular movement, there will people that attach themselves to it to serve their own agenda, sometimes fully self serving, sometimes because they see a platform to advance something they see as extremely important for society, even if many other people disagree on the fundamentals or just the methodology. While missteps of the BLM movement deserve to be called out and criticized, it's also important to remember that great many people are more interested with the original core tenets of the movement and so it's not accurate to paint them all because of the actions of a few.

The same goes for the Democratic and Republican parties. I'm sure everyone here could point to bad actions that people have taken in the name of those groups and/or organizations, but that doesn't mean we should assume those negative instances represent the wishes of all the others in that group, or apply the criticism across the entire group when it doesn't reflect a majority of their views.

And before people come back with their perceptions of how much of a group believes in and supports the actions of some, it's worth considering that opposition groups will always latch onto the problem people and subgroups and play them up as larger than they are, so the media will almost always either misrepresent them as a larger or smaller portion of that group than they actually are.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#99

Post by kaitai »

eplanit wrote: post #45
hairofadog wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what point you're making, but I have noticed that "google Chicago shootings" has become something of a racist dog whistle, so if that's not your intent there may be better phrasing with which to make it.

The point is black lives seem to matter only if taken by a white police officer. The BLM movement is quite silent regarding other black deaths.

The American Cancer Society is quite silent regarding heart attacks.

There are plenty of groups working on Black maternal and infant mortality, drug and gang violence in the Black community, etc. If you want to work on that feel free to volunteer/give money. The criticism that "movement A isn't doing anything about topic B" is just sort of silly, as I can always come up with some worthy topic that movement A isn't addressing, no matter which movement.

Re: Dorothy Butler Gilliam: ‘I am not a maid, I am a reporter’

#100

Post by burnished »

jaywalk wrote: post #94
FactolSarin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holding police accountable for unreasonable killings is not being anti-police.

And if that's all BLM did, far fewer people would have any issue with them. But you're simply ignoring reality if you really think that they limit themselves to unreasonable killings.

Yeah like that person who lit a cop car in Seattle on fire! Oh, they were white? And from Texas? And didn't appear to believe that black lives mattered at all? The point I'm trying to get here is that you're arguing with what should be an unimpeachable central thesis "black lives matter". Also, you are kidding yourself. The US is still painfully racist. People were gonna get mad no matter what because it was about black people.
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