In every circumstance, there appears to be a racist connotation to calling black murders “cheap deaths”.
I'm using the term "dog whistle" here to mean a comment that appears to be innocuous, ambiguous, or harmless to anyone who doesn't already understand the reference, but which in fact has meaning or acts as a placeholder for a longer, well-tread narrative to people familiar with a particular subculture. In this case, the two ways it can be interpreted are spelled out pretty concisely by the first two responses here:
"The point he's making is that despite lip service by the media little has changed", which I take to mean, "Media still considers the deaths of black people to be cheap and therefore not worth reporting."
Then we have, "The point is black lives seem to matter only if taken by a white police officer", which is the dog-whistle version I was talking about. If that's the message someone is taking from the ambiguous phrase "google Chicago shootings", well, I can't think of a better illustration of the term "dog whistle".
I mean, look, if black lives matter (and they do), then all black lives matter, whether they're killed by a police officer, or whether they're killed by other blacks in inner-city violence.
We need to continue to have the conversation about police killing blacks. We also need to have a conversation about inner-city violence, and try to figure out what can be done to help. We need both. How do we have the second conversation without it being shut down as an attempt to shut down the first conversation?
> How do we have the second conversation without it being shut down as an attempt to shut down the first conversation?
The best answer I can give you is that it's subjective. I'm happy to have a good-faith conversation even (or especially!) with people I disagree with, but dropping "google Chicago shootings" into a drive-by comment isn't what I would consider to be making a good-faith argument.
(In the same way that if I asked HN about their favorite keto recipes more than likely all the replies will be about keto broadly)
The discussion above is to identify that when someone says "google Chicago shootings" what they actually are trying to do is undermine the position of someone bringing up "Black Lives Matter" in an indirect way. This specific behavior of bringing up another, new subject matter for the purpose of undermining a position, instead of stating one's criticism about the position directly, is known as a dogwhistle.
I searched about the Chicago shooting deaths, and i don't see how it makes any point for or against BLM?
And, even if BLM is selectively in what they care about. Aren't they allowed to?
I feel like i got between the fronts of for-BLM and against-BLM groupthink.
It doesn't! Any social movement, no matter how just their cause, should be willing to accept valid criticism. However, when Person A says "look at this instance of systemic racism" and someone else replies "But MLK cheated on his wife!!", that's not arguing in good faith; that's commonly known as "whataboutism". [^1]
> I searched about the Chicago shooting deaths, and i don't see how it makes any point for or against BLM?
This is what makes it a dog whistle. The words are "google Chicago shootings", and there's nothing wrong with the literal meaning of those words, but other people here clearly received the message "this point about systemic racism is invalid because BLM is a bunch of hypocrites".
If you google for the exact phrase "google Chicago shootings", including the word "google", you will find many instances of people using that phrase to make bad faith arguments criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement.
This thread is the first result for me. Not kidding. Could it be that you made it up that its a dog whistle? I'm doubting your good faith here.
Yes, seeing dog-whistles everywhere gets tedious (for all concerned) but the above is, unfortunately, a real thing. I'd be surprised to see it used with that intent on HN, though.
> There's a whole pile of twitterese phrases like this that are used to fly under moderation radar.
What rule is it breaking to tell people to "google chicago shootings"?
And my question
> How does the second statement relate to racism?
is still not answered. Is just knowing the information about the Chicago gun violence putting some folks at disadvantage? Where is the implied link here?
I understand. If you don't keep an eye on the right parts of the right sites (including, in particular, Twitter, but also others) you've probably never seen this kind of thing actually done with the intent to slyly express racist or white supremacist junk. In the right places, though, it's commonplace and only barely veiled (questions from newbies who don't "get it" draw winky-emoji, or more veiled pointers so the newbie can triangulate the real intended meaning, that kind of thing).
> What rule is it breaking to tell people to "google chicago shootings"?
It's not, that's the point. They're dodges/stand-ins for other things, including prior whistles that are recognized as breaking the rules and do get moderated. The more deniable, the better.
In some cases, there's some unfortunate overlap between actual concerns about a real issue (black-on-black violence) which one might innocently express interest in, and precisely the same issue (and, specifically, Chicago, for this issue) as a common short-hand for rejecting the importance of other issues of violence against black people (you see how useful it would be for shifting blame or implying even worse things, if one wanted to do that, right?), or a kind of conversation starter for what amounts to a recruitment script.
[EDIT] to be clear, I'm not claiming you had ill intent. I'm explaining why that phrasing and topic set off some alarm bells for some people.
I happened to catch an actual, no-bullshit white supremacist recruitment program on a fairly high-powered (like, literally—they have quite a bit of broadcast power) local AM radio station a few months back (I checked their schedule afterward, out of curiosity, and much of the rest was religious programming—go figure). By which I don't mean they were explicitly saying "come to the Knights of Columbus hall at 7:00 on Wednesday for our meetings", but they were going through this plainly carefully scripted soft-handed discussion (two-host format) and doing a lot of "just asking questions" but somehow those questions kept taking them right up to the edge—and I mean right up to the edge—of "it's the Jews and black people who are the problem", meanwhile they're dropping one phrase or historical reference after another that's unmistakably from white supremacist "thought", as in, encountered basically nowhere but there, so their listeners have a nice list of things to google that will definitely lead them further down the rabbit hole. It was unreal. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but they just kept going with that stuff, relentlessly. It was the entire thing they were doing, nothing else. It was very different from normal right-wing radio, which I hear a lot of (what can I say, I have a problem and enjoy listening to nutty crap when driving) and there was no doubt what they were up to.
There's some real WTF to be found in this country. Everyone freaking out about dog whistles is ridiculous, and those accusations are abused. But then you hear something like the above, and... yeah, it's a real thing sometimes. Very strange place.
Here are my Google search results:
As another data point, I've been hearing variations of that phrase online or in person for ages from my racist family and (former) friends.
It's a discussion killer and a thought ender, and I think HN would do well to ban accusations of dog-whistles. It never heightens the dialog, it only drags it down.
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.
A cohesive home with both the mother and father present, where moral values are taught, is more effective than a sad, government-run program.
Which can be torn apart by crime, police brutality, over-policing, or criminalization of being poor; get a parking ticket, fail to pay it, go to jail, lose your job, rinse and repeat.
(A sign seen at a BLM protest sums it up: "You kill our fathers, then make fun of us for not having one")
> where moral values are taught
I'd wager that the vast majority of parents and guardians teach their kids not to lie, cheat, steal, or hurt other people. How much those teachings take root depends a great deal on the child's environment and peer group. Don't believe me? Then why do parents pay so much money for a "good" school district? The moral values they impart should hold even if they live in a "bad" neighborhood, right?
> sad, government-run program
Who said anything about government-run? Churches, community groups and local clubs like the Rotary Club, even police departments (this last one is the government, I'll give you that) run after-school and youth programs to keep kids busy and engaged in productive pursuits.
Secondly, if both parents are working long hours, you need someone to keep an eye on the kids after school. Some people have grandparents or other relatives but not everyone is so lucky (the grandparents themselves might be working long hours; generational poverty is a thing). Absent that support, the external factors I mentioned above begin to dominate.
Again, I don't understand the hate for a movement that, at its core, claims to want to hold government servants accountable for the crimes they commit. That's generally considered a good thing across political lines.
One sees the same thing in refugee camps, which I think are directly analogous.
The only alternative explanation is "these types of people are violent and lawless by nature", which I do not accept.
No it isn't. In addition to seeing law enforcement as a threat, there are other forces that couple explain disparate murder rates - such as the rate of drug use, the rate of single parent households, the level of lead in water.
Your comment reads perilously close to "Either you believe <party line> or <be racist>, no alternatives, so I choose <party line>." There are a hundred other explanations.
With a large number of black people being incarcerated due to systemic justice problems, of course you're going to have a higher rate of single parent households (and this is something that can propagate through generations).
Those things you listed aren't really "other forces" that can explain disparate murder rates. They're all part of the same issue.
Drug use and single parenthood, though, are in line with my intended (not what I wrote) meaning, though. One has to ask why there is higher drug use and single parenthood, and it seems to me that the end result of asking why will be "systemic issues" or "nature of the people".
Of course, which systemic issues will remain a difficult question, and the answer will probably be a bit of a bunch of things. But overall, my comment was attempting to answer why I think BLM supporter focus on law enforcement violence, and "are silent" on black-on-black violence - it's because the latter is seen as a symptom, the former a cause.
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.
Here's something that you should consider: the police murder problem in the US is massive. If our police had the same rate of killings as German police, we would have about 45 deaths at the hands of the police every year. But we actually have over 1000. And black people are twice as likely to be killed than white people by our murderous police. Why shouldn't we complain about that?
> black people are twice as likely to be killed than white people by our murderous police.
Among young people (18-45), black people are ten times as likely to die by homocide (27.6% of deaths vs 2.8%). From the [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/men/2017/nonhispanic-w...).
Giving yourself a broad focus "black lives" and then ignoring the number one category of death among young males (homicide) - it's a bit odd.
Imagine if you ran across the "Cancer Matters" institute and it turned out they don't study lung, breast, or prostate cancers (the three most common and deadly). Instead they study just one specific subtype. What would you think?
Edit: just a small comment, but I'm more trying to "explain the argument" than make it myself. Asking if organizations are "pure enough" to their purposes is a common tactic on all sides, and it's clear that _some_ who ask this don't do so in good faith, trying to set the bar impossibly high. People have wildly different perceptions of BLM, in part because BLM is different organizations in different cities. I don't mean to endorse those impossibly high bars, only to _explain_ that the criticism is that BLM is not meeting the bar to some folks in terms of actions matching the mission/label. I'm trying to answer in good faith - assuming that the question was asked in that same good faith - as a legitimate request for explanation.
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.
And why is that? Ask any sociologist and they'll have the same answer: systemic racism. This shows up in hundreds of different ways: redlining, wage gaps, resource availability, etc.. The criminal justice system as a whole, and cops in particular, are a huge part of this. Cops Terry Stop black people at higher rates than white people. Cops detain black motorists at higher rates than white people. Cops arrest black people at higher rates than white people for the same crimes. They are prosecuted at higher rates than white people for the same crimes. They receive longer sentences than white people for the same crimes. And they get wrongfully convicted (as evidenced by exonerations) at higher rates than white people. And we have an extremely ugly history of making laws that are intentionally targeted at criminalizing black people...giving cops more ammunition to continue this oppression.
Black people being murdered in cold blood by police officers is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to black oppression by the police. World War I wasn't started because people really cared about Austrian Archdukes...the explosion into full on war was a long time coming, and Franz Ferdinand was just the trigger. Just as well, BLM activists absolutely care about black people being killed by black people. But when a cop, who represents a daily oppressive force against black people trying to make their way out of poverty, brutally murders someone in cold blood, in broad daylight, and with dozens of witnesses begging him to relent, and then continues to choke a dead body for several minutes after he gave up the ghost....yeah, protesters have every right to make a big fucking deal about it.
BLM absolutely cares about black violence and crime. They know what the solution is: black economic mobility. And contrary to the experience of poor white people that also experience violence and crime problems, cops are a part of the problem, not the solution.
Just to be clear, to all the downvoters, this is an actual earnest conversation. I don't think any participant of this thread deserves the downvotes that it is getting. I do believe there is subtle racism here, but it isn't malicious racism, just the typical sort of everyday biases that present themselves in all people from time to time. We don't solve systemic racism by taking sides and lobbing pot shot insults. That does more damage than good.
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.
(I'm not saying that's definitely what causes the difference to persist when income-adjusted, I'm just curious if you found that to be factored in, somehow, in the research you've seen)
[EDIT] I guess for international readers or US readers who haven't spent much time in the country, I should clarify that shooting street signs, mostly stop signs, is a (perhaps surprisingly) common activity in the rural US. You'll see lots of bullet-holes in signs if you drive around a bit in that kind of area. It's the rural equivalent of putting bumper stickers on the back of them, I guess.
The definition of crime has a lot of data collection problems. Official crime rates are compiled by police reports, and if there is a bias in policing or prosecution, there will be a bias in reporting as well. There are methodologies that are used (all of which with their own problems that make them suitable for some analyses but not others) to allow for better analyses to be made. It is through these alternative methodologies that we can even make claims like "black people are twice as likely to be arrested than white people for possession of marijuana": pure collection biases hide the fact that black people and white people are consuming marijuana at similar rates.
The definition of poverty is also fraught, though not for systemic racism reasons. Poverty can be defined in relative terms or absolute terms. It can be based off of wealth, or it can be based off of income. It can be based on household income/wealth or individual income/wealth. It can be defined in terms economic mobility (the ability to change wealth over time), or point in time measurements. It can include social capital as well: some definitions of poverty take into account education availability, parental education levels, etc.
In fact, you mention single parent households, which is deeply tied to poverty. child abandonment rates have a strong inter-causal link with poverty: high poverty causes income earners to abandon their children, and children without income earners in the household not only live in higher poverty as a result, but are likely to perpetuate the poverty. And disparate policing certainly has its own contributors to poverty, because it takes parents away from children.
A good overview of the various methodologies and existing literature can be found here:
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3226952/Sampson_...
... Of course, no one whistling “what about Chicago?” has any desire to resolve the problems in Chicago. If this were about Chicago, they’d be talking about the perils of low investment in communities, the shuttering of mental health facilities, school closures, police corruption or ineffective policing. There would be a push to bring back programs that were cut during the Illinois budget crisis. CeaseFire’s violence reduction strategies were working, until the budget freeze of Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) cut $4.7 million in funding in 2015, effectively shutting down the program. Though some funding has been restored recently, the momentum they had built has obviously been lost. “What about Chicago” is a convenient deflection, and nothing more ever seems to come of it....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/0...
If @hairofadog did in fact just make up this claim, I'd be tremendously interested in hearing what access they have to time travel devices to plant a story from over three years ago in a major national paper of record.
As a protip, paywalled articles are often available through archives. Experience infonauts have learned to make use of these:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180813171901/https://www.washi...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/0...
Whether or not you're a racist is really up to you, and how you behave regarding and concerning race-related matters. That's not looking so good from where I sit.