Which of the two beliefs do you think is a better representation of the core belief popular among Black Lives Matter activists, in your opinion?
(1) Blacks are systematically and SUBCONSCIOUSLY targeted for demise.
(2) Blacks are systematically and INTENTIONALLY targeted for demise.
I think that the people in the BLM movement would say that it doesn't matter to them whether the racism that they face is subconscious or intentional. That it is very real is what matters.
And I don't think that anyone else is claiming that the police are targeting anyone to kill them, whether intentionally or subconsciously. I don't know if you have ever been in the position where you have to take someone's life, it isn't an easy thing to do. If killing comes easily to you then you are either a sociopath or a psychopath, or you have been trained to do it in very specific circumstances, that is, military training which relies heavily on kill or see your buddy killed.
It is unreasonable to assume that the police are trained to view killing as anything but a last resort or that they are all anti-social.
And I don't think that anyone could reasonably say that it is systematic racism on the part of the police that is the problem, about 25% of the urban police are black and they are involved in about this percentage of the shooting incidents involving black suspects. As you would suspect, unless you assume that the police are systematically racist.
And I don't think that the problem is that the police are unreasonably assuming that more blacks are involved in more criminality than other races. Obviously they are and the police would be remiss if they didn't take this into account, just like they would be remiss to ignore the fact that when a wife is murdered it is usually the husband who is the killer or that areas populated by the poor have more crime because the poor commit the vast majority of street crimes.
I think that the BLM movement is a result of what blacks know because they are reminded of it everyday, that they are still discriminated against. That they are disproportionally poor, that they are involved in more criminally because of it, that they are stopped disproportionally even for their own criminally, that they are convicted more often and that they serve longer prison terms. That they as a group go to poorer schools. That they have a harder time getting a job. That when they do get a job they have to work harder for less pay.
When they point these obvious facts out that they are still horribly discriminated against despite all of the successes of the civil rights era, then the effects of the discrimination, poverty, lower educational achievement, more criminality, etc. are used to minimize and even to justify the cause of the problems, the discrimination.
It has gotten so bad that in survey after survey about one half of whites today feel that discrimination against whites is a bigger problem than discrimination against blacks. This is insane. It is more an expression of the pervasive racism than a rational conclusion of the available facts. And I think that this half of the whites realize it. If you ask them if considering their professed belief in the advantages of being black if they would prefer then to be black to take advantage of the discrimination against whites that the answer is no.
What the BLM movement is protesting against is reasonable, the killing of innocents by the police. No matter why, the police shouldn't be shooting people who pose no threat to the life of the officer involved. Black parents shouldn't have to teach their children to fear the police like they do now. It can only add to the problems, causing them to become progressively worse.
The way that it is now the police justifiably fear blacks and blacks justifiably fear the police. This obviously is a serious problem. A problem that defies an obvious solution other than the apparently intractable, for some reason that completely escapes me, solution of ending the pervasive discrimination of blacks.
