Can you imagine how differently the movement would gone if they simply adjusted the slogan from “Black Lives Matter” to “Black Lives Matter Too”. The fact that something this simple didn’t happen is a failure on the movement itself.
As a mater of fact I can. If they had used such an inoffensive moniker for their movement it would have been shoved to the back page of every newspaper and barely mentioned in any news program. The conservative assholes would have made fun of the acronyms and there would have been literally no conversation about the topic and no one would have had to come to terms with their own unaddressed racism that had been planted by 100 years of racist American ideology.
You and everyone who has commented with this exact “fix” for the Black Lives Matter movement should search within yourselves and try to determine why it really offends you so much. I saw someone mention the suffragette movement in relation to BLM and the comparison is apt. Suffragettes didn’t have any problem with disrupting the comfort of the people who’s opinion they were trying to alter. They knew very well that you cannot bring change by meekly asking for permission to get equal rights and standing in society. You have to get in their face and tell them YOU MUST BE COUNTED.
Your analysis is simply wrong. Nobody find finds the Black Lives Matter slogan offensive. It’s criticized because it’s it’s too vague, not because it’s provocative. The reason why conservatives latched on to the slogan specifically is precisely because the underlying point is valid and true. Regardless of how you personally see it, there are a lot of people out there who came to different conclusions as to what this slogan means. Many saw it to mean that black lives matter more or that other lives matter less. This different interpretation led a lot of people who would otherwise agree with the core cause to disassociate with the movement. This difference in support is key to any social movement as it defines a movement gaining enough support to achieve real change vs not. Optics matter.
You brought up the point that movements need to be offensive to get anywhere, but that’s not true. Social movements like this don’t need a “shock” factor in their optics. The videos of police brutality and the disproportionate statistics do that for the movement. They’re literally why the movement exists in the first place. The civil rights movement already demonstrates that this strategy is not effective or necessary. The same goes for the suffragette movement actually, and the LGBT movement as well.
This idea that social movements can get anywhere by simply demanding stuff is nonsense. All social movements require the support of the public to achieve anything. The suffragette movement campaigned to gain the favor of men, the civil rights did the same with white people, and so did the LGBT movement with straight people. Without the support of these demographics, their rights would’ve never been voted into place. All these movements were deliberate about their messaging, slogans, and optics. They didn’t try to shock people with their slogans, they wanted to convince people that they deserved their rights and they did so that appealed to everyone.
The videos of police brutality and the disproportionate statistics do that for the movement. They’re literally why the movement exists in the first place.
You are fantastically naive. There have been literally thousands of videos of police brutality towards black people. All of which were 100% unnecessary. Rodney King was beaten almost to death by police officers on video in 1991. And black people had to riot to get any real attention to how completely fucked up our system is because every cop who beat him got off completely scott free. And still 30 years later another black man was murdered on camera in broad daylight by a cop who did not give one shit because he and his cohorts assumed they would see no consequences for what they were doing. And without BLM and the absolute shitstorm of protest that every black person and their allies threw up, he would have been given a free pass too. BLM is the reckoning that white America has to contend with because they continue to support racist ideologies. And, quite frankly, if nothing is done to curb the racist bullshit being enacted against non-whites right now there is an even bigger shitstorm on the horizon.
As a mater of fact I can. If they had used such an inoffensive moniker for their movement it would have been shoved to the back page of every newspaper and barely mentioned in any news program. The conservative assholes would have made fun of the acronyms and there would have been literally no conversation about the topic and no one would have had to come to terms with their own unaddressed racism that had been planted by 100 years of racist American ideology.
You and everyone who has commented with this exact “fix” for the Black Lives Matter movement should search within yourselves and try to determine why it really offends you so much. I saw someone mention the suffragette movement in relation to BLM and the comparison is apt. Suffragettes didn’t have any problem with disrupting the comfort of the people who’s opinion they were trying to alter. They knew very well that you cannot bring change by meekly asking for permission to get equal rights and standing in society. You have to get in their face and tell them YOU MUST BE COUNTED.
BLACK LIVES FUCKING MATTER
Your analysis is simply wrong. Nobody find finds the Black Lives Matter slogan offensive. It’s criticized because it’s it’s too vague, not because it’s provocative. The reason why conservatives latched on to the slogan specifically is precisely because the underlying point is valid and true. Regardless of how you personally see it, there are a lot of people out there who came to different conclusions as to what this slogan means. Many saw it to mean that black lives matter more or that other lives matter less. This different interpretation led a lot of people who would otherwise agree with the core cause to disassociate with the movement. This difference in support is key to any social movement as it defines a movement gaining enough support to achieve real change vs not. Optics matter.
You brought up the point that movements need to be offensive to get anywhere, but that’s not true. Social movements like this don’t need a “shock” factor in their optics. The videos of police brutality and the disproportionate statistics do that for the movement. They’re literally why the movement exists in the first place. The civil rights movement already demonstrates that this strategy is not effective or necessary. The same goes for the suffragette movement actually, and the LGBT movement as well.
This idea that social movements can get anywhere by simply demanding stuff is nonsense. All social movements require the support of the public to achieve anything. The suffragette movement campaigned to gain the favor of men, the civil rights did the same with white people, and so did the LGBT movement with straight people. Without the support of these demographics, their rights would’ve never been voted into place. All these movements were deliberate about their messaging, slogans, and optics. They didn’t try to shock people with their slogans, they wanted to convince people that they deserved their rights and they did so that appealed to everyone.
You are fantastically naive. There have been literally thousands of videos of police brutality towards black people. All of which were 100% unnecessary. Rodney King was beaten almost to death by police officers on video in 1991. And black people had to riot to get any real attention to how completely fucked up our system is because every cop who beat him got off completely scott free. And still 30 years later another black man was murdered on camera in broad daylight by a cop who did not give one shit because he and his cohorts assumed they would see no consequences for what they were doing. And without BLM and the absolute shitstorm of protest that every black person and their allies threw up, he would have been given a free pass too. BLM is the reckoning that white America has to contend with because they continue to support racist ideologies. And, quite frankly, if nothing is done to curb the racist bullshit being enacted against non-whites right now there is an even bigger shitstorm on the horizon.
Also, you should actually read some of the things that suffragettes had to do to get the attention of the public for over a century.. It was not polite or inoffensive.