While I understand the reason for the name of the Black Lives Matter movement, I can also understand why this phrase would annoy some people. When you say something as obviously true as "black lives matter", it invites people to ask the question of who must be disagreeing with this statement that we have to keep repeating it. Clearly this statement was intended for American law enforcement and I think it is very unfair to assume that any law enforcement officer would disagree with this statement unless there is no other explanation for their behavior. Do some law enforcement officers feel more threatened by black men than white men: this seems very likely given the number of innocent and unarmed black men who have been shot by police in recent years. While this means some police officers have a racial bias, it does not mean they think black lives don't matter. These officers who have shot unarmed black men think they are in a threatening situation and use way more force than is warranted, for which I agree they should still be prosecuted. While there are seemingly two issues here (racial bias and overuse of force), neither of these issues have to have anything to do with anyone believing black lives don't matter.

Edit: of course I realize that another way to interpret the statement "black lives matter" is to see it as more of a slogan and a constant reminder to address the issue as opposed to an accusation that someone or some group of people thinks otherwise. The fact that this statement is open to alternative interpretations is a problem for this movement, though.

What about a statement such as "whites are responsible for slavery". It's true, but not all "whites" were responsible. I think a lot of people wouldn't bat an eye at this comment. However, at an individual level it seems unfair to me, since obviously not everyone that was qualified by the label "white" during slavery is responsible.

>However, at an individual level it seems unfair to me, since obviously not everyone that was qualified by the label "white" during slavery is responsible.

All white people as individuals were not responsible for slavery, and some even opposed it, but all still benefited from slavery by virtue of being born into the race, society and class that the slave system was designed to benefit. That is unfair, but nonetheless true.

> but all still benefited from slavery by virtue of being born into the race, society and class that the slave system was designed to benefit.

This is false. Many benefited, true, but not all. And even if it was true, I don't see why people should be made responsible for the actions of others that under some definition are from their same "group", even if they benefited from them. This is collectivism/racism at its finest, it bothers me tremendously and I'm not even white.

>This is false. Many benefited, true, but not all.

There are indirect benefits and direct benefits to an unjust system - implicit as well as explicit power that comes from membership in a privileged class. Having legal rights and protections that other classes don't enjoy is a benefit. Being allowed to read, having autonomy over your own children, being able to walk freely, being allowed to maintain a connection to one's ancestors, religion and emigrant homeland... these are all benefits granted to white people as a group during slavery.

> I don't see why people should be made responsible for the actions of others that under some definition are from their same "group", even if they benefited from them.

Well... I did concede that they shouldn't, and weren't. But if one group of people are considered property, and another group of people are legally capable of owning the first, then the latter group benefits from that system if only because they aren't the former.

It just happens that, at that time and place, the necessary selector for privilege was "whiteness." In another time, it might have been religion, or ethnicity or culture or following the wrong King. There were plenty of societies that practiced slavery that discriminated along many lines.

But these rights were not granted to entire groups of people during slavery. See how the Irish were treated both by the British and as immigrants to the US. They were seen as lesser.

Irish Catholics and many other groups had no special place as immigrants, they didn't get positive points for not being African. That's the unfortunate truth with all forms of discrimination, it's hardly something limited by class, race or time.

Irish american here. My ancestors came after slavery waa abolished in the us. They faced much discrimination when they arrived. Yet i still indirectly benefit from slavery and its repercussions. My family fled a decaying crime filled city to the suburbs. Their black neighbors could not, thanks to redlining and restrictive conevants. But by then, irish Americans were more likely to be seen as white. I grew up in a nice town with good schools as a result.

Sure, slavery didnt literally benefit every white person. But youd be hard pressed to find a white person today who never experienced any form of white privellage

They got massive points for not being African. They were included --- belatedly --- in the definition of "white" precisely so they could join other European Americans in solidarity against Africans. "No positive points for Irish for not being black" is a crazy, ahistorical thing to say. When I was born, in the 1970s, there wasn't a neighborhood in Chicago my Irish family couldn't have gotten a mortgage in. African Americans couldn't say that!

We may be talking about different times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_nativist_riots

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment

https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish...

I find nothing ahistorical about what I said.

If you go further back and see what Cromwell and others did to the Irish (the first British colonization was in Ireland), and then extend that to the US, where that kind of hatred was shared by Nativists, it is certainly not inaccurate, even if the discrimination is of a different from than what Africans faced.

I dislike the notion that because people aren't African they weren't victims, too, which gets bandied around a lot. We all have tragedies and I see no reason to ignore the plight of one to make the point about another (which the parent post does, wrongly).

Who is attacking white people here? Nobody is blaming all white people for slavery. At least not in this article or in the comments here.

Maybe "whites are responsible for slavery" is a deceptive statement for all i know. But nobodys saying that.

To me this is basically what the original commenter is saying, for which he was heavily downvoted.

>don’t need to point this out, because it’s just an undercover way of diminishing the point being mad

That’s the feature though, not a bug.