Yes, they do, as do all lives, but let us not use the latter to diminish the claims “Black Lives” makes on us. Historically, migrant people often suffer discrimination. That is not because some “system” is inherently racist – we cannot blame it on something impersonal; it is because mankind is tribal and our nature is a fallen one. The history of “Black Lives” in America is different from in the UK; in the former the ancestors of most “Black Lives” came in slave ships, suffered horrendously, and the marks of that left a deep scar. But that is not to say that “Black lives” in the UK have not also been the subject of discrimination. I am old enough to remember being shocked by some of the words used by adults which I won’t sully the internet with. That this situation is being weaponised by some for left-wing causes should not, and I hope will not, detract from the need to pay attention to the real problems suffered by racial minorities. I missed the protests about the way the Chinese treat their minorities, but I am sure they were equally vociferous within China, although I suspect statues of Chairman Mao may stand a while yet.
What ought to concern us all is the weaponisation of a good cause. That carries with it the potential to polarise society and make things worse. Wherever people feel there are things they are not allowed to say, they do not forget those things, and they are never exposed to the reasons why they might, on consideration, change their attitudes, they become fixed; nay, they become a virtuous cause which dare not speak its name. The most obvious example in the UK is what became the Brexit movement. When what Nixon once called “the silent majority” got a chance to speak, it did so with a vengeance. It may, to some of us, have spoken incoherently and with a force which surprised us, but that is on us; we never asked, we were never told, and so we made ourselves deaf to the feelings of others. We must try to avoid a repetition of this with “Black Lives Matter.” It is about far more than statues, and those focussing on it help the rest of us miss the point, unless we are careful.
Macaulay was correct when he wrote: “We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.” We might now rephrase this, as there is something more ridiculous, that is “woke Twitter.” If we proceed from the assumption there is one “correct” way of thinking and that all who disagree are bad people with evil motives, we end by creating not a society in which everyone thinks alike, but one in which everyone speaks alike; group-speak is not quite the same as group-think, although those in the solipsism usually mistake it for such. It does not last, and when it goes, it usually involves violence and a sharp move to the opposite extreme.
The origin of our ills is us, as St Paul reminded the Romans long ago:
15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
There is but one cure for this, and it is not group-think or group-speak. Indeed, here our own Faith risks being misused as a cover, as Jesus warned us when He spoke about how we should conduct ourselves, not trumpeting our virtues or excoriating the sins of others. We are all sinners, and that stone we wish to cast should, if we have self-knowledge, remain in the dirt where we found it. St Paul knew there was but one answer to this sin operating within us:
So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord
Law can do only so much, and is, of course, necessary given our fallen nature. But only Christ can warm our hearts within us and make us whole. Before he is “cancelled” let us remember that old ex-slaver lost in the mire of sin, John Newton, who received Christ and turned from his sin to campaign against that very slavery of which he had been a victim and in which he had been a protagonist. He rightly bade us sing of that “Amazing Grace” which had saved a wretch like him.
So, as the culture wars take this new turn, and as good causes are weaponised by some for ends which others will contest, let us stop a while and remember we are on a road where we all get hurt, and that only the love of God saves; but let us rejoice that it is bestowed on all who turn to Christ. Though our sins are scarlet, yet shall we be washed clean – black, brown, yellow and white. In Christ there is no division, in Him we are all one. If we can live that as though we truly believe it, then we shall do better, and we may even begin to apprehend why “Black Lives Matter” is something to which we might all, as Christians, attend with prayerful enquiry.
All Along the Watchtower 
To be frank, while I agree with parts of this post, other sections leave me uneasy. I am increasingly convinced that a lot of this is not our business. St Paul also exhorted us to live quiet lives and to show respect for the authorities and for our fellow citizens. There has been a great deal of what might be called “interference” going on: people getting involved in matters that do not concern them.
A lot of our woes can be traced, as you say, to our fallen human nature, but part of that story is a lack of self-control and usurpation of the rights of others. I cannot condone the radical demands that are being demanded by many quarters in these culture wars and I cannot condone the concommitant assaults on the rule of law and the principle of objectivity. I cannot speak for Scoop, but I expect I am more likely to agree with his comments here, because, although not co-Catholics, I suspect we share similar views about how society is to conduct itself on “secular” matters. What we are seeing now is Yeats’ “mere chaos is loosed upon the world”.
Of course the lives of Black people are equally as precious in the sight of God as any other section of humanity. No one disputes the various wrongs they have suffered – but the UK is not America and our heritage belongs to us. Now, one might say that the movement has been hijacked, but I do not think the answer is truly as clear-cut as that metanarrative would have us believe. When we consider how the package is presented and ancillary and other views that are usually in that package, we must ask whether as a whole it can be reconciled with orthodox Christianity – the answer to my mind, is “No.” It constitutes to great an assault on the sovereignty of nations and the rule of law and the principles of patrimony. Were our ancestors alive, they would be horrified..
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There is nothing, Nicholas, especially Christian about national sovereignty, and a rule of law where men and women of a different skin tone feel less equal is surely not what a proper rule of law should be? If we allow the sloganeering to dominate public discourse and think we can pass by on the other side as it is not our business, I wonder whether that is the Gospel calling or our own preferences for a quiet iLife?
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Also @servusfidelis
I take your points, and I cannot be certain that I am not reading too much into your post. I’m trying to exercise the philosophical doctrine of charity for interpreting others’ words. However, there are a number of points that concern me amidst these disturbances.
Our black-letter law (no pun intended) does NOT discriminate against people of ethnic minorities. If there remain failures in policing, I grant that those need to be addressed, but I do not draw the inference that:
(i) it was acceptable for people to protest by means of public assembly under the lockdown, especially when they could write to their MPs and to the media;
(ii) that it was acceptable for people to carry out acts of iconoclasm, which in legal terms, constitutes criminal damage and probably gives rise to liability in tort (possibly the tort of conversion);
(iii) that it is appropriate to give further space to the slave trade and related matters in the publically-prescribed curriculum given (a) the lack of time within history lessons and between history and other disciplines and (b) the importance of giving space to our own history such as the civil war and other matters that took place in Great Britain and Ireland
(iv) that is acceptable for people in the UK to protest events in the USA qua events in the USA, which are not our business. As an arch-Brexiteer and patriot, I was profoundly offended by the interference of other sovereign powers in our decision to leave and I consider it hypocritical for any Brexiteer to comment on the internal matters of another nation, especially when there is a clear distinction to be drawn between the actions of a rogue policeman and local establishment that failed to weed him out and the behaviour of other police departments in other States, regions, and muncipalities.
(V) that the “one in Christ” verses should be taken as (A) licence for nations to unite or (B) an injunction against nations that wish to defend their independence. These protests may have been hijacked – I can possibly concede that point – but even the peaceful people tend to espouse politics that are contrary to the nationalist position, and that is a concern. I fear it may also destabilise the Conservative Party, destroying what little of it remains, which will leave the British electorate with no party of patriotism to represent their cause, the other two being thoroughly unpatriotic at their upper, controlling echelons.
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There is, of course, nothing stopping the authorities taking iconoclasts to court, but I suspect it will not happen.
In terms of history, I think we are under an obligation not to propagandise in either direction. But since it could hardly be argued we have erred in emphasising the less savoury aspects of our national history, the argument against looking more closely at the slave trade escapes me. It was settlers of British origin who introduced slavery into the 13 Colonies, and British merchants who supplied them. The source, of course, was often African kings, which might lead us to ask what part Africans also played in this trade, which in turn, might widen the dialogue.
I am not sure that, being a nation which has often interfered in the sovereign affairs of other nations, we are in a strong position to protest when others do likewise.
As for the Conservative Party, words almost fail me. I am unsure what it has conserved, or even that the PM knows what the word means. The current Government are offering so many hostages to fortune that we shall have to rely in Labour’s well known ability to shoot itself in both feet.
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I think they will try to prosecute, and there is clear footage of uncoerced confession that magistrate should have no problem interpreting as testimony of the requisite intent (not that I approve of magistrates’ courts). However, if they try, there are likely to be further disturbances, which will themselves be an assault on the rule of law.
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In the US the Republicans (supposed law and order patriots and conservatives) are hiding under their desks and acquiescing to demands and trying to placate common criminals and instigators of coups and uprisings that put our entire country in jeopardy. This must stop and it should have been stopped years ago.
I also find it offensive to black people to think that they can only get ahead if the white people become irrelevant. That is not how America works. Their failure to assimilate was designed by the progressives and those who are pandering for votes. The only way to do that is to keep raising the past and refraining from examining who the new plantation owners are.
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Agreed.
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@servusfidelis Remind me, have churches in the US been attacked in any of these riots? I am hearing concerns that (a) this has happened or (b) this will happen.
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Yes Nick, they have fire bombed several . . . one being St. Johns where every American President has visited . . . quite historic.
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That is tragic.
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I suppose that if you tell lies often enough even the historians will tell the lies thinking that they are telling the truth.
BLM is not some grassroots slogan that ‘just happened’ because of their treatment. They are a political activist group that is trying to instigate a coup under the guise of guilt and shaming people for the crimes of racism and slavery which is well over 150 years in our past. The population today is not so divided and unequal as you would. have us think. When did any other group have so much money and influence politically? They demand and the progressives jump to their demands along with the multinational corporations. How much money is enough for reparations I wonder. Here is a small sliver of donations pledged to the BLM at this writing: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/companies-donating-black-lives-matter/
Not to mention their own campaigns for individual donations on their website: https://blacklivesmatter.com
This is not your grandmother’s cause to right wrongs of the past. We did that here with the blood of around 620,000 people during our Civil War. We have stayed on top of the troubles following that awful war with legislation and changes to the Constitution itself.
Here is a short list:
1863: Emancipation Proclamation
1865: 13th Amendment – Abolishing Slavery
Civil Rights Act of 1866 and 1871
The Enforcement Act of 1870
The Force Act of 1871
The KKK Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1875
1868: 14th amendment was ratified by the states
1870: 15th amendment – guarantees the right to vote for all citizens
1954: Brown v. Board of Education – Ended legal racial segregation in schools
1962: Bailey v. Patterson – ends desegregation in transportation
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
1967: Loving v. Virginia – declared state laws preventing interracial marriage to be unconstitutional
1953: President Eisenhower instituted rules eliminating discrimination in government contracting
Civil Rights Act of 1957
1957 & 1959 Eisenhower ordered desegregation in DC public schools
Insurrection Act amended in 1871 – Federal law that empowers the President of the United States to deploy U.S. military and federalized National Guard troops within the United States to enforce law.
1871 – President Grant sent soldiers to suppress the KKK in South Carolina
1957 – President Eisenhower sent soldiers to protect students in Little Rock Crisis
1962 – President Kennedy federalized the National Guard to allow a black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi.
1965 – President Johnson federalized the National Guard to protect civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery Alabama.
You effect change when you see a need to right injustices. But you don’t placate those who are make a living in race baiting, looting, rioting and killing to demonstrate their anger. If there is a racist mentality here among the blacks it is driven by those who agitate and profit either politically or financially from doing so. The Progressives are at the root, as are men like George Soros and other wealthy individuals who seek to end sovereign nations and even want the Constitution scrapped so that we can join the globalist “sustainable development” crowd. It is not an accident that the BLM website uses the same words and has the same “goals” as the UN elites who would like to reduce the population of the world by eliminating 3/4 of those who are alive today; for they believe that 2 million is about right.
Besides, their claim of systemic change and defunding the police is laughable at its very core. All men have suffered from unjust governments and nowhere is there a better government for protecting the rights of its people than the US and the UK. Should all people alive today trace out their roots to when they themselves were persecuted by ethnicity, religion or status? All have had ancestors who suffered this plight. But that is not our reality today in the US or the UK and I take a knee for nobody except Christ in America. I do not bow to demands and myths that being perpetrated and taught as though they were true. And I notice that nowhere does anyone blame the slavers in Africa: the black tribes that sold their neighboring tribes to the mostly British slave ship owners to be brought here. It is not as if they were made available to these human merchants by their own means.
It is amazing what people are used as pawns. Today it is the black population and tomorrow it will be the Hispanic and so the game goes. Do not let a good crisis go to waste.
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As I said, the leftist agenda being pursued is one thing, the treatment of “black lives” quite another. That nearly 100 years after the civil war Kennedy and Johnson had to federalise the National Guard tells its own story about the effects – or lack thereof – of all that legislation.
That men like Sharpton abuse the situation for their own ends does not mean that there is no problem, any more than it means we pay reparations. But as Christians we cannot pass by on the other side and hope it will go away.
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The problem is who has the knee on the throat of the black population . . . and almost nobody is willing to say it. The Democratic Party (the KKK folks) have enslaved them and keep them poor, uneducated and more likely to have families without fathers. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson only profited from this as they have no other skills than to agitate. The racism belongs to those who use the blacks to further this lie and keep the past alive. The average Joe in the street is not prejudiced and judge men by their character rather than by their skin color. I think rioting, looting and firebombing tells us a lot about the character of these ‘protestors’ who are in many cases paid for their participation and otherwise lured by left to abandon capitalism and adopt socialism, Marxism or Communism. They are being played.
I was in High School when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed and in college in 1966 I had many black friends (remember that a large portion of the peaceful protests that accomplished that were white and also died and shed blood for the cause). Now what happened was the influx of two new forces in the black community: the Black Panthers and the Black Muslims. When they set up chapters at my University, due to peer pressure and fear, not a single one of my black friends remained. They told us that they could no longer be seen with us.
This is a political movement that is being kept alive by the progressives and cashed in on (for the short term) by the blacks. They have sold their souls for the goods that they can loot and will never be prosecuted for . . . not to mention killing, beating and setting their neighborhoods on fire.
The regular folk, who work together in this nation get along well and we have once again (since the early days) been able to form friendships again between us. That is because most of them grew up and took responsibility for their own lives. We’ve done a better job of that in the South though we were the last of the states to normalize race relations. It is in the progressive states and cities where this stuff is out of control. Blacks are killed in the largest black on black crimes in their cities where Democrats have been reelected for often over 50 years and their plight gets no better. Thank God, there are more folks in this country than those in Chicago, NYC, Baltimore, Philadelphia and other hot spots due to the agitation of Propaganda Activists like BLM. They are a terrorist group of sorts who strike fear in the politicians and are willing to give up the protection of the very people that got them elected. It is scandalous and very dangerous. This is a coup that will not end well . . . and could lead to another type of civil unrest that will be wholly fought for color of skin and special rights for people of dark skin. They want new laws and they want not police to uphold the law and the rights of the people. The police statistics are almost 180 degrees from what the agitators are trying to convince the country of. Simply look up the numbers on Google and it is obvious to anyone who can read a chart or the summarized statistics.
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Oh and Christians should remind people that souls have no color and own no property and become rich and poor in this life. Equality of outcome and a life without suffering is probably a very poor spiritual life. It is through adversity that we develop virtues for the life to come. For Church leaders to think that they are morally superior to the people they serve is pride, pure and simple. Save souls and you won’t be needing to talk about saving lives from racism or some other inner hatred for a soul in need of salvation.
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All very true, and easy to say when one’s skin colour does not have an adverse influence on your life chances. No one has mentioned equality of outcomes, and adversity is not, as I think you will agree, an experience African-Americans are unfamiliar with. Saving souls involves a willingness to confront one’s own sins as well as those of others.
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Is it skin color or education and nuclear families John? Jews had it tough and I don’t see a JLM group burning and looting. The Irish suffered and so did the Italians and Puerto Ricans (in the 50’s) . . . but nobody has had such a long legacy of discrimination as do the Jews. They ask and demand nothing. Their families became stronger and they helped one another. I also think that you slander blacks as though they can’t make it when times are tough. We’ve got many professionals who not only survived their challenges but thrived and have given back to their neighborhoods. You seem to think that the thugs who are the product of such nonsense as this, plus their fatherless upbringing. If you and other continue to side with this contingent of thugs you only throw fuel on the fire not different than opportunists like the Democrats or Al Sharpton. If you submit to them over and over again, when will it end? When will they run out of things that they want? It won’t. If you do the crime then be prepared to do the time. That has always been the expectation in this country as it should be.
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Talking with colleagues who are not white, they tell me that they, too, feel that they are prejudged by their skin colour at times, so yes, skin colour seems to matter to those who have it. It may be that you, being white, are not in in the best position to say, ditto myself. No one says racism is confined to one set of people, but the Irish and the Jews are not are easily distinguishable from the white community. No one is talking about submitting to them, why adopt their language and attitude? Some of them may want conflict, Our Lord’s way was not to give it them.
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I don’t blame them when they are fed a diet of this white privilege nonsense and white guilt day in and day out. But it is far from the actual fact. I live in the South and I do not even hear whites utter such things . . . and we are supposed to be the worst racists. We eat together, shop together, work together go to sporting events together. It is nothing like what is being portrayed by BLM.
What they want is create two sets of laws and to be paid off to stop rioting, looting and shooting. This is not a “movement” this is organized crime in which their crimes will be forgiven by the state or paid off or prison fines paid (like here in the US) by rich liberals or multi-national companies. Funny that! Just a coincidence?
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But have they been fed this for the last fify years? No one excewpt the extremists is arguing that things have not improved, but of course, that is always when things get edgy because there are those who want them to improve faster.
I am not talking about what the rioters want, but about how Christians should respond, and that always has to be with undertanding. I am not sure that we have understood – as the over-reaction in some white quarters shows. Men who veer from ignoring a problem to insisting it is vital it is solved are not, on the whole, men who understand an issue, they are politicians seeking to bend with the wind.
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It seems to me that we are speaking of the same thing. In the US we are closer than the divide that is being espoused by the media and groups like BLM who get elected and get paid for causing divisions where there weren’t any. In my day it happened on campus with the Black Panthers, Black Muslims and agencies like ACORN and IAF etc. They go away and simply multiply and change there names. But their goal is to divide society into smaller groups and stir up hatred between people where previously there was none. It is not the Liberal Elites who push this nonsense that are banned for what they say, it is conservative voices. You could hardly find anyone who print the writings of Thomas Sowell or comment favorably on people like Clarence Thomas or Alan Keyes. All black men who were well respected individuals with good characters who were and are law-abiding citizens. They got no freebies and there was no welfare when they made it out of their poverty. Those are the people I know as well as many good retired military folks. The people on the street are a mixed bag. Some, like you are socially concerned individuals and don’t intend to cause mayhem. Amongst them are implants, bought and paid for, by the like of BLM and Antifa. If you can’t see it then you aren’t looking very hard.
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I don’t disagree. Extremists will seize any opportunity they get. As long as the rest of us show sensitivity to the real needs of others, we starve the extremists of fuel.
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Agreed.
The problem with organization that have political aims and goals is that whites really have no experiential basis to speak upon and therefore we should be quiet and simply join them as mindless followers. But worse, is the hatred and scorn lobbed at conservative black men, scholars, politicians and military men and just plain old patriotic folks minding their own business (in other words, law-abiding citizens of the United States). Their voices are banned and scorned. So whatever we say here is simply academic.
Nothing is going to happen until a real honest debate takes place between those two factions. We whites are either going to be pawns for the Left or considered unfit to live.
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Chalcedon – very good that you have a social conscience. I find this lacking in much of the so-called `Christian’ community. I recently read `The Blake Escape’ by Michael Randle and Pat Pottle – an excellent book which I would commend to anybody – and was left wondering why `social conscience’ and `Christianity’ don’t seem to go hand in hand and why one has to look for `social conscience’ outside the Christian community.
The `Black Lives’ protest is in response to a very serious problem.
I’m intrigued by your `Brexit’ comments. This puts you on the `pro-EU; side. At the time of the referendum I was anti-EU (and I still am). My problem with the EU was not the EU itself; it was the deal struck by Edward Heath back in 1973 which meant that the UK no longer had control over its territorial waters. I remember my first political statement back in 1972 when I was 5 years old; `why do we share a government with the English when we have so much more in common with the Norwegians?’ This wasn’t an anti-English statement, but came after we had been visiting my great-uncle, a fisherman, who had landed many catches in Bergen in his time and who had decorated his house very tastefully in Norwegian style. We were fishermen, they were fishermen. We were outraged back then when Edward Heath gave away our territorial waters.
Come 2016, absolutely nothing had changed and absolutely nothing had happened to change my mind. In fact, in England, `coastal town’ was synonymous with depression and decay. So people who had dismissed our concerns back in 1973 came to understand (by 2016) that we had been right all along.
In principle I like the EU, I’d be very happy if the UK were to re-join, but only on condition that our territorial waters are our territorial waters for our fishermen and are used as a resource to re-invigorate these depressed coastal towns (which weren’t depressed back in 1973).
I like much of what the EU has achieved and I take the view that `freedom of movement’ really is a great political achievement. Those of us descended from the fishing communities are probably in a minority, but we’re a sizeable minority and we were enough to tip the vote so that leave won. It was brainless stupidity on the part of Edward Heath to overlook us back in 1973 since we are, for the most part conservative (small c) and natural Tory voters.
We told you loudly and clearly back then, we kept telling you throughout and your statement `It may, to some of us, have spoken incoherently and with a force which surprised us’ actually makes the pro-EU people look somewhat arrogant if they thought that we were `incoherent’.
With apologies for picking on one peripheral detail. I liked your post and, on the whole, am in agreement with it.
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Thanks Jock. I am, on the whole with you. I voted no in 1975 and until I really examined it in 2016, was anti EU. I share all your reservations about it, but as a conservative, I took the view that the changes involved had not been thought through and withdrawing would do more harm than good. I do think that may EU supporters were arrogant and ignorant of the currents you describe.
On the topic of the post, I simply fail to see how any Christian can think that their faith does not involve helping those who need help – it’s embedded in the Gospel message. Reading, as I do after Pentecost, Acts, it shows how the earliest Christians operated. I can’t find they were terribly worried about the authority of the Pope or the form of the liturgy, neither can I find they thought women should know their place. But that’s another story.
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There is a fundamental reason the ongoing situation is so offending to African Americans concerning “All Lives Matter”, as a response to “Black Lives Matter”. When someone says that Black Lives Matter, they are meaning it with an expectation that those responsible for the problem accept ownership of the problem. All lives matter is blatant virtue signaling and another distraction to sidetrack a cause that should have resolved years ago—and like telling them to clean up after someone else’s mess.
And I disagree with the comment above that blacks are trying to diminish whites to get ahead—
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Well, Jim – who do you say is responsible? And what do you say should be done about it?
As I understand it – the catalyst for the current protests was the murder of a black person by a policeman who should probably have never been recruited into the police force. Why the police force continues to have this problem I have no idea.
I remember one of Ralph Steadman’s illustrations for a piece by Hunter S Thompson, showing the police to be characteristically brutal thugs. One commentator suggested that he had seen one policeman like that – and with an eagle eye for detail had exaggerated the features that made him look particularly evil – and had given all the police these features in his cartoon.
This comes from the early 1970’s. Why the police force *still* contains brutal thugs is something that is quite beyond me. I’m sure that there are lots of people who have been trying to do something about it – but clearly there is still a very serious problem.
So I’d like to know from you – who you hold responsible and – more importantly – what do you suggest that they do about it.
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First of all, forming countermovents “all lives matter” and “blue lives matter” should have never happened in response to BLM. For anything to change, all lives matter should immediately take the high road and educate their constituents on the white privilege they deny exists, by actually listening to the plea of black america and openly endorse BLM (pipedream)
Now we have a problem as everything is now institutionalized it becomes corrupt. Black lives is forced into a dialog to defend accusations it is a racist organization, and all lives matter is to blame for that. They are the only ones that can fix it, but the horse is out of the barn. They stirred a pot exciting racism and now it runs on belief.
Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents … Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”—Eric Hoffer, There is no devil here, just a race frustrated by the constant stonewalling of a culture that doesn’t admit they are the problem—out of ignorance, really. Nobody thinks its them.
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Jim – I wasn’t aware of this counter `all lives matter’ counter movement and yes – I’d agree that this, in response to `Black Lives Matter’, under the circumstances, is crassly insensitive.
For the rest, it isn’t clear to me what you mean by a `culture that doesn’t admit they are the problem’. Could you be more precise about this?
There must be some reason why a problem that was clearly present over 50 years ago (thuggish policemen who enjoy gratuitous violence) is still present and hasn’t been dealt with – there clearly is a `culture’ within the police that could do to be eradicated and replaced.
Of course, it isn’t just to do with thuggish police.
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“ culture that doesn’t admit they are the problem”. I should rephrase this, that white people genuinely don’t recognize there is a problem, or that it could be them. They even deny black peoples feelings of how they are treated in the street. If you feel oppressed, is there a reason for that?
It doesn’t help that self appointed black leaders indoctrinate their constituents to believe a certain way. Ive experienced this first hand working as a medic in Watts. I was working so-cal during the Pasadena fires and met some black coworkers. It was tense. They couldn’t even imagine that if they had come to my hometown in Washington, that nobody would care. If anything they would have been treated like royalty. So there is more to the problem than I can solve in a blog comment, but the black community has allowed its leadership to maintain somewhat of a false narrative that is in the minority, regional.
But here all lives matter one-upped a necessary dialog with all lives matter and immediately cried black racism, when we all know the case was never closed. I have witnessed hundreds of instances where good cops get in a group of cops and become a pack of bullies to the homeless and mentally ill. They have there own lingo and you should here the chatter after the call. There is a problem when the police have become enforcers with military training and egos—and really bad tempers. A lot of them.
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Jim – what you say about the cops makes sense. There is some sort of sinister culture there. The fact that cops who were basically `good’ to begin with get corrupted makes sense. It explains why nothing has changed over a l-o-n-g period.
I’m a bit worried about the `leadership’ comments. If someone consents to belong to a `community’ with a `community leader’ and listens to what this leader says, then this is just asking for trouble. I don’t (or at least not to my knowledge) belong to such a `community’ and there certainly isn’t any `leader’ who has that sort of influence on me – so I think you have hit on some problem.
But that discussion should probably be for another day. Nothing – absolutely nothing – excuses the murders that we have seen the police committing, which *all* seem to have been by white police murdering black people – and this *is* a symptom of something more sinister and nasty.
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Think of the police like politicians. They get in with the best of intent, but the good ones quit. I know a few
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They get corrupted. Either become corrupt, or quit
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I think that, as Christians, we all own the problem because it has an effect on us all. We are responsible not for some abstract situation which no one alive caused, but for caring each for the other.
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But is it not mainly those that would identify as christian decrying black lives matter? I think when it was initiated a few years ago we had a chance to take it seriously through an awareness campaign and talkking, but no, choosing sides is much more in line with human behavior. That why every lasting movement has a devil. Hitler had his jews, and Trump used the mexican immigrant farm worker to divide and conquer.
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Jim – well, as I said, I hadn’t heard of the `all lives matter’ counter until I read your comment, but – it wouldn’t surprise me if `Christians’ were taking a strange position on this. I’m truly amazed at those who identify as `Christians’ consistently taking the wrong side – and that I have to look elsewhere (i.e. not at the `Christian’ community) for something that looks like a social conscience based on good moral principles. (I am a Christian).
Off topic of `black lives’ – but one thing that does alarm me is the conversation about Israel and Palestine. I think that the Palestinians have been hard done by – but what bothers me most of all is that `Christians’ take the view, `well the national salvation of Israel was foretold in Scripture’ (it wasn’t – in Romans 9 – 11 Paul only writes about savlation from sin through faith in Christ), `it’s very nice to see this happen – we can overlook the odd minor war crime to help it on its way and great that the USA/UK military are giving God a helping hand to fulfil this promise’. If you want a clear-sighted moral / ethical appraisal of the Middle East, then don’t expect to get it from the `Christian’ community.
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I don’t know, to be honest Jim. But as I suggest, Christians should not pass by n the other side.
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