#BlackLivesMatter vs. #AllLivesMatter

Real talk (or Hate facts) about [yourchoice]LivesMatter:

Proponents of the #BlackLivesMatter [BLM] are adamant in the usage of BLM for it is to focus on the disadvantages and suffering black lives; #AllLivesMatter [ALM] is to overlook those disadvantages and suffering that blacks are subject to.  These disadvantages and suffering come to black lives at the hands of law enforcement.  The BLM keeps the focus that ALM loses.  After all, ALM would include everyone, and if the focus is on black lives, then incorporating any other hue takes away from the focus on black lives.  To BLM proponents, ALM is deemed not actively, but passively racist.

Firstly, let us look at the amount of suffering at the hands of law enforcement.

In absolute numbers, whites are killed more by law enforcement than are any other race (Swaine et al, 2016).  But absolute numbers are overlooked, for as a percentage, blacks are killed at a higher rate (around double the rates of whites) – hence, BLM.  Blacks compose 13 percent of the national population, suffering 26 percent of police shootings, but American Indians are only 0.8 percent of the population and suffer 1.9 percent of police shootings (Males, 2014).  #NativeLivesMatter does not get the focus BLM gets. 

BLM is then to be the [un]happy medium of absolute numbers and percentage of population?

Some say it is a white ‘colorblindness’ to not see the plight of blacks.  That it is an example of ‘white privilege’ to overlook the fact that blacks are arrested at higher rates than whites.  There is a difference between seeing things in a colorblind manner, and in putting the blinders-of-agenda on one’s face.  People cluster, tend to live and grow with those like them, and have a preference for the known and similar.   As with benign acts in life, criminal acts generally fall within those clusters – the highest percentage of criminal activity suffered by an ethic group, is by its own ethnic group (Taylor, 2015).  If it is truly BLM against law enforcement killing blacks, it should expand to black-on-black crime, as 90 percent of black homicides are committed by black offenders (FBI, 2013).  Blacks are a larger percentage of reported offenders for most crimes (Rubenstein, 2016).  As such, blacks are more likely to be stopped, but when stopped, they are just as likely as whites to suffer from use of force by Law Enforcement (Miller, et al, 2016).  Lastly, it is disingenuous to combine for the sake of inflating numbers, that which should not be paired: Mike Brown was not the same as Eric Garner, just as Alton Stirling was not the same as Philando Castile; there are the differences between an escalation of force versus the abuse of force.

This returns us to BLM vs. ALM.  Which is more racist?  That one specifically addresses race in its name provides the key factor from which to make a decision.  This is the soft, the passive racism reflected in positive focus: this group needs to be elevated first.  However, basing it upon an ethnicity for positive regard is no less racist-based than a negative regard – though it may be less malevolent in nature.  That is the new face of racism: not denigrating but elevating.  With that expected elevation, it overlooks that which is not the elevated type, and where the elevation is not seen gets interpreted as racism by those not elevating. 

If your first criterion is the color of skin, then your criterion is by definition racist.  But as not the malevolent type, it gets glossed over.  However, in the glossing over, events that do not come within the blinders of agenda, get glossed over.

Eric Garner’s pleas as he was choked to death ‘I can’t breathe’ (New York Daily News, 2014) are haunting – his life mattered.  Kelly Thomas’ (Truth Be Known Revolution, 2012) pleas as he was beaten to death ‘I’m sorry’ & ‘Dad, they’re killing me!’ are equally haunting – his life mattered.  [American Indian] John Williams (PoliceCrimes.com, 2014) carrying a legal knife while carving wood, being shot seven seconds after being approached by police – his life mattered.  Chronologically, Thomas’ death was before Garner’s, and that just goes to show whites have been victims of police brutality too, before BLM.  Though, as Miller et al (2016) found, neither at a higher rate, and as Swaine et al (2015) found, more whites are killed in total by law enforcement.

There already is a philosophy, a mindset that says all individuals are to be treated humanely and have their rights recognized: it is humanism.  Regardless of race, age, sex, or any other superficial characteristic, being a human being means you are to have your human rights recognized.  Being black, white, or any other hue is irrelevant.  All these subcategories come under the umbrella of humanism, of All Lives Matter.  If blacks (American Indians, or any other group) are not being treated fairly, it is by what standard – the standard that all humans are to be treated.

If you want to focus on black lives, that is fine – it is not the malevolent racism that leads to lynchings – if by focusing on black lives is to focus on blacks who have been victimized, and not to begin to victimize the purported victimizers’ race.  Looking at groups is to not look at an individual’s humanity.

Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech had the section where it mentioned ‘where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character…’ (King, 2013).  Morgan Freeman had an exchange with Mike Wallace (2014), which encapsulates what is truly needed to get beyond racism:

Mike Wallace: How are we going to get rid of racism until…?

Morgan Freeman: Stop talking about it.  I’m going to stop calling you a white man.  And I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.”

Within the terms themselves – BLM and ALM – exist the passive or active exclusiveness and inclusiveness of whose lives are to matter; this can be in order of importance and focus in BLM or equal value in ALM.  It is not to overlook the plight of blacks who suffer to say ALM; it is to overlook the plight of whites (and any other ethnicity) who suffer violence equally at the hands of the police, or say that because one is white, they have not suffered disadvantages.  A poor white born and raised in the rural areas of Appalachia will have different opportunities (or lack thereof) than a rich white, or a rich black born in Manhattan.  Perceived socioeconomic status can override ethnic grouping.  The poor are the ones most susceptible to increasing criminalization of behavior, and are subject to more interactions with law enforcement: more behaviors becoming illegal, being unable to pay for fines, getting more fines or arrested for not being able to pay, and then billed for more charges (Dolan & Carr, n.d.).  It is actually the State versus the people: authoritarianism versus individualism.

Racism will never be totally eradicated, for there is the soft racism that is part of humanity being group-oriented – having a preference for one’s own clusters, including familial, cultural, and ethnicity.  Not actively being against a group, it is not as problematic: help your likes, not harm your dislikes.  Ultimately, if you want to combat racism, it is not be enshrining it in a different manner, giving different moral values among people, and further entrenching the division that is to be moved beyond. (White guilt is the reaction of not wanting to be perceived as against-racist, so the opposite is engaged to be elevating racist).

Ultimately, there are two ‘colors’ that should be the focus.

Sweat is clear; blood is red.

References

Dolan, K., & Carr, J. (n.d.). The Poor Get Prison: The Alarming Spread of the Criminalization of Poverty [PDF]. Washington, DC: Institute for Policy Studies.

FBI. (2013). Murder: Race, Ethnicity, and Sex of Victim by Race, Ethnicity, and Sex of Offender, 2013. Retrieved from https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls

Freeman, M. (2014). Morgan Freeman Black History Month with Subtitle. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRnTovm26I4

King, M., Jr. (2013). Martin Luther King, Jr. I Have A Dream Speech. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vDWWy4CMhE

Males, M. (2014, August 26). Who Are Police Killing? Retrieved from http://www.cjcj.org/news/8113

Miller, T. R., Lawrence, B. A., Carlson, N. N., Hendrie, D., Randall, S., Rockett, I. R., & Spicer, R. S. (2016). Perils of police action: A cautionary tale from US data sets. Injury Prevention Inj Prev. doi:10.1136/injuryprev-2016-042023

New York Daily News. (2014). Original Eric Garner fatal arrest video. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfXqYwyzQpM

PoliceCrimes.com. (2014). Police Shooting and Murder of Woodcarver John T. Williams. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn5Glv9nhgE

Rubenstein, E. (2016). The Color of Crime: Race, Crime, and Justice in America [PDF]. New Century Foundation.

Swaine, J., Laughland, O., Lartey, J., Davis, K., Harris, R., Popovich, N., . . . Team, G. U. (2015). The Counted: People killed by police in the United States – interactive. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database

Taylor, J. (2015, July 2). New DOJ Statistics on Race and Violent Crime. Retrieved from http://www.amren.com/news/2015/07/new-doj-statistics-on-race-and-violent-crime/

Truth Be Known Revolution. (2012). This Is What Happened to Kelly Thomas. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1po6Sic5lOU

It is About Gun Control

Who controls the guns? – that is the key question when dealing with guns and gun control.

Guns are, first and foremost, tools – they are complex mechanical instruments with various parts to achieve an action of which ultimately is completed when its components are in order: the necessary springs, hammers, levers, and all else, including ammo, being locked-and-loaded, having enough pressure put upon the trigger in order for the tool to fire.  It will not fire on its own.  Leave a firearm on a table, and it will remain there unless it is moved.

If you give up control of the weapon to leave it on the table, then another can take control of the weapon.

It is to the owner of a weapon to have control of it, including how to handle it when it is being carried, or place it where it cannot be put in the control of someone undesired to have it.

Some may say ‘what about the children?  They may get ahold of a gun and injure or kill themselves, or someone else.’  This is an example of who controls the gun.  If a child gets behind the wheel of a car, puts it in gear and the vehicle moves, is there an expanded call for vehicle control? – no.  The ones who get the blame are the child, the parent who should have been supervising the child, and the one who left a vehicle in a state that the child could get control of it.  Levels of culpability are to vary in accordance to context of roles.  The car is a tool of transportation and appropriately, is not blamed for how it was (mis)used, just as a gun is a tool for shooting, is not agentic, and cannot have blame placed upon it.

Others will say ‘if we ban guns, or restrict them enough, then we can stop all the gun deaths.’  Let it sink in for a moment, the foolishness within that claim.  In order to do this, we must first look at ‘all the gun deaths.’  All the gun deaths include suicide; suicides are included in these calls about gun deaths, for as PEW Research shows, suicides with guns outnumber homicide using guns.  If the suicide itself is not the issue, but the gun is, then methodology is the concern – so much for compassion.  Accidents are also included in gun deaths, but true to the word ‘accident’ the act was unintentional, and an exception to the norm.  Again, if one was using a car had an accident that resulted in the death of someone, new regulations would not be called for because of a loss of vehicle control. 

That leaves homicide.  Recent numbers from the CDC showed a total of homicides at 16,000.  Census data out to 2010 shows 114.8 million households in the United States.  PEW research shows 37% of those households (42.4 million) have a firearm of some type within them, holding between 270 and 310 million firearms.  That leaves 0.00038 of households involved per homicide, which includes gang and drug-related homicides.  This shows that if the vast majority is not taking every precaution possible, they have taken enough control of their own tools to not be used to inflict harm, to not violate the rights of another.  Statistically, that is insignificant; practically, a foolish base to implement new standards upon the rest of society; morally, irrelevant to free individuals being able to direct and defend their own lives.

Personal gun control involves proper grip of the weapon.  ‘Social’ gun control involves responsible individuals (people in a society) being able to shoot back at the one who decides to violate individual rights. 

Laws introduced to control guns will only be obeyed by those who follow the laws – one who is intent on murdering someone will not be concerned about a lesser law violation of possession, as an example see Suzanne Gratia Hupp who left her pistol in the car in accordance to the law, and was in Luby’s where a shooter killed 23 (including her parents) and injured 27 before killing himself.  In her testimony before congress, she said “I’m mad at my legislators for legislating me out of the right to protect myself and my family.  I would much rather be sitting in jail with a felony sentence on my head, and have my parents alive.”

Gun control laws simply restrict the possession of arms to those who have been granted the authorization to initiate force: government agents.  The greatest mass murder was not perpetrated by 

an individual in Orlando, FL; the greatest mass murders were repeatedly done by government agents: Waco, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek to name a few, and in the Memorial Day Massacre of 1937, 50 unarmed people were shot, 10 were killed, and another 100 were beaten with clubs by the police.  While the overall violent crime rate has been decreasing, the number of homicides and violence perpetrated by police have increased: 500 individuals killed and 40,000 no-knock raids in the past year by police against citizenry. 

The Constitution is to be the supreme law of the land, but through nuanced interpretation (i.e. rationalization) to justify State expansion, such as domestic spying, arrest without a warrant for being ‘under suspicion,’ restrictions on firearms with repeated calls to expand what is and is not allowed for free people to possess, an ever decreasing standard for when police can search for ‘drugs’; there are still people alive today who were put in internment camps for being deemed dangerous for being Japanese.  In either case, it will be those who control their guns using them to achieve their ends, setting up situations where you will lose your liberty in the best scenario, or in the worst be not judged by twelve, but be carried by six.

If free people do not control their own guns, then they will be more vulnerable to those who control their own, illegally or legally.

God Does Not Love The Children

We are often told that ‘God loves the children’.  This is especially heard from anti-abortionists who decree that all life is precious, and God has a plan for each individual (and would-be individual).  There are, after all, numerous verses in the bible that mention God’s love for His children, in particular it can be read in 1 John 5 and Galatians 3 (among others), where it is stated that those who follow Jesus are children of God, and that regardless of male or female, Jew or Gentile, slave or free, all are equal children in faith.

But talk without walk leaves empty words.  A brief biblical review of God’s history with children shows that God repeatedly acted without love toward children.  Some acts were specifically done by God, some done for God through other [supernatural] biblical characters, while other acts were done by God’s followers, with God’s condoning such actions. 

The book of Genesis chapters 6-7 both recount the story of Noah saving his family and two of each kind of animal.  Lost in the misdirection is the genocide of a planet’s population, which would have included countless families and children.  With some bad people on the planet, God applied the wet equivalent of a scorched-Earth policy with “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them.  Behold, I will destroy the earth”.

In a similar vein as the planet-wide destruction, Sodom and Gomorrah were targeted as they were filled with ‘wicked’ people.  Entire cities were wiped out, but this time it was with actual fire.  The inhabitants would have burned to death.  Again, there would have been children present, who would have been burnt with the rest.  Only Lot, his wife and daughters escaped; his wife did not make it far before being turned into salt, for the wrongful act of turning to look at the destruction of her once home.  However, before the destruction and to show how precious children were, there was a mob was demanding Lot’s [male] visitors.  Lot derided the wickedness of the mob for their demands, but offered up his virgin daughters to be gang-raped (Genesis 19).  If he was an example of righteous behavior, exactly how much worse were the people of the mob? – would they actually have been much worse?

In Exodus 11, there is the Plague of the Firstborn where God killed the firstborn sons of all: from the Pharaoh’s son on the throne, to the slave; even animal firstborn were not to be spared.  This was all done with God’s assistance in hardening Pharaoh’s heart, so that God could show His wonders.  Mass killing of children needed to be done in order to show God’s might, and no mind would be allowed to change that plan.

Job 1 has the honorable servant having his faith tested through numerous ordeals that Satan inflicts, and God allowed.  Among these ordeals, all Job’s children are killed, crushed when winds blew out the walls of the building they were inside.  That God later granted Job a new family does little for the little ones who were crushed to death.

Biblical Heroes such as Moses and Joshua were great killers for God.  Moses in Numbers 31, had his people raze the city of Midian, and kill all the people within; when his soldiers spared the women, he had his men kill all the women who had known a man, so the virgin girls could be kept as [sex] slaves.  Joshua razed the city of Jericho in Joshua 6, but he was more thorough, not leaving any captives.  The bible is explicit in how none were spared, male or female, young or old.  The exception for Joshua was Rahab, who assisted by protecting his men before the city was overthrown.  Children were killed en masse by the sword, except for those taken as spoils, as sex slaves.

Abraham was ordered to sacrifice his son Isaac in Genesis 22; God waited for Isaac to be bound atop the alter, and Abraham’s knife to be raised, before stopping the sacrifice.  Jephthah’s daughter was not so lucky (she does not even get a name in the bible), for God allowed her to be sacrificed to His honor (Judges 11). 

Both Abraham and Jephthah were warriors for God, as were Moses and Joshua; they combined to slaughter and enslave countless children.  Is it any wonder that soldiers waiting for battle had dreams of crushing their enemies and bashing the brains of their children on rocks – all in the service of The Lord – as stated in Psalm 137. 

The ‘child’ (for anti-abortionists) does not even need to be born in order for it to be deemed worthy of being killed.  Numbers 5 has a dust-water test for women who had their faithfulness to their husbands questioned; failing the test, if she is pregnant, leads to a Holy abortion – making her belly swell with an induced miscarriage. If that is too passive, waiting for God to induce an abortion, Menahem in 2 Kings 15 raided Tirzah; for the people not surrendering, he punished them and that included "... all the women therein that were with child he ripped up."  2 Kings 22 blends the will of a biblical hero with God's might, when Elijah was mocked by "... little children out of the city...", to which he cursed the children and God had two bears maul 42 of the children to death.

Lastly, and most egregiously, we have the book of 2 Samuel 12.  King David wanted Bathsheba, but she was married; David decided to remove the competition by sending the husband [Uriah] off to war to be killed – and he was killed.  The enabled David to marry Bathsheba.  The Lord was upset with David, and in order to punish him, allowed a son to be born, only to suffer for seven days before dying.  If there is any innocent individual, it would be a newborn.  It had no control over how it came to be, who its parents were, and had no means of doing anything except receive care after being born.  It was this helpless innocent that was stricken and made to suffer before being killed. 

God has no problem directly or indirectly, with the killing of children (fetuses or actually born individuals).  Contrary to the admonition in 1 John 5 and Galatians 3, there are those who are not children of God.  As not part of being in the ‘ingroup’ they are of the ‘outgroup’ and with Holy Religious division, not truly human deserving of rights.  At best, God’s love for children should have an asterisk, for if you are not part of ‘His children’ then you are of ‘their children.’  Revelation 2 states that “I will kill her children with death.”  Here, it is not specifically referring to actual children; however, through biblical examples, though not specially isolating children, they are included.  If virgin girls can be taken as sex slaves, boys can be killed with the sword, and a newborn be made sick and suffer until it dies, why should it be assumed that other children would be safe?  By repeated examples, children are not safe.

God loves His ingroup, and not those outside – children or not.  (rather, the fundamentalists’ adherence to biblical doctrine denies love as a concept does not actually have emotion).  It is a Good Beyond God, the use of reason and recognition of individual rights – and of humanity – that enables one to truly love.