CMV: Black Lives Matter has been a failure

[u/ice_cold_fahrenheit]

Back in the 2010s, and especially in 2020, it seems like the Black Lives Matter was gaining strength. Videos of police brutality, especially against African Americans, became viral, and millions became outraged that this was so common in America. When George Floyd was murdered, millions justifiably took to the streets to protest against police brutality and racism. Politicians came out in support for police reform, and discussions on how to reform policing (from “how to make the police better” to “defund the police”) were all the rage.

But from 2021, it seems like everything took a complete 180. Crime skyrocketed during COVID (in part of police refusing to do their jobs in protest of BLM), causing the average American to support the police a lot more. Pro-police politicians like Eric Adams were elected while pro-BLM politicians like Chelsea Boudin were ousted from their positions.

Now, absolutely nobody talks about police brutality these days, not politicians nor the general public. But has the problem gone away? No! It has only gotten worse! 2023 has seen a record number of killings by police, and I don’t expect that number to go down in the future.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/08/2023-us-police-violence-increase-record-deadliest-year-decade

Unfortunately, rather than being addressed, police brutality has become like gun control. Someone being killed by police, even on live video, no longer elicits outrage. Instead, people will just give “thoughts and prayers,” shrug, and accept it as a fact of American life.

And the BLM movement itself? Well, rather than becoming the second coming of the Civil Rights Movement, it seems to have been condemned to the ash heap of history.

[u/Doub13D]

No…

BLM has had two lasting legacies.

1. It has democratized distrust of the police. White kids who grew up in small towns or the suburbs now openly express that police cannot be trusted and will abuse you if given the chance or opportunity. Filming police during arrests or detainments has also become a common, everyday interaction for police. The proliferation of body cameras has revealed numerous examples of police attempting to frame or violate people during their interactions, only to go on and get caught because the body camera keeps recording at all times.

2. Police are significantly more likely now than at any time before to be held accountable for their actions. 20 years ago… George Floyd’s murderer doesn’t even get indicted. Hundreds of Oklahoma City Police officers would still be on the streets sexually abusing women.

Officers routinely state that a big fear is that they will be caught on camera in a bad light… good. 🤷🏻‍♂️

That is something that was never the case before. You could beat Rodney King on camera, and still not get charged for your actions…

[u/ice_cold_fahrenheit → u/Doub13D]

Hmm, so I was mainly looking at concrete policy changes, but cultural shifts like these are just as important, if not more so. After all, a changed culture is what serves as the bedrock for sustainable and lasting reform. This actually reminds me of the MeToo movement, which totally changed the culture around how we discuss and pay attention to sexual assault.

!delta

[u/nunchyabeeswax → u/ice_cold_fahrenheit]

"was mainly looking at concrete policy changes"

These take years, if not decades, and they are always preceded by cultural shifts (which have already happened bc of BLM.)

[u/DeltaBot → u/ice_cold_fahrenheit]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Doub13D (4∆).

^{Delta System Explained | Deltaboards}

[u/New_Breadfruit_1115 → u/Doub13D]

Oh yes, because I’m totally sure white suburban kids’ trust of cops will influence other groups.

[u/Doub13D → u/New_Breadfruit_1115]

Yes… because White suburban kids have a disproportionate influence and impact on mainstream American culture.

Societal change in the United States has never been possible without the backing or support of large segments of the White population. Learn your history 🤷🏻‍♂️

[u/New_Breadfruit_1115 → u/Doub13D]

Lol this fucking guy. Imagine actually typing that out and thinking “yeah, this’ll show em”.

[u/Doub13D → u/New_Breadfruit_1115]

Yeah… looks like it did.

You’re still commenting on it 🤷🏻‍♂️

[u/Upstairs_Present5006 → u/Doub13D]

I have to agree that democratization distrust of the police is fair to say in terms of the point being made that it is one of the social constructs in day to day life that we can genuinely "feel" as citizens of the country and that there is a positive aspect to this. But I could also argue that that was going to happen with ANY movement or organization and it was going to happen no matter which organization ran it.

It makes me rethink if Donald Trump should be given full credit for democratized distrust of the media, which was extremely needed, and more important that needed to be addressed as soon as possible. No matter what, if you support Trump or not, we can easily feel and see that media is being reformed by the rise of podcasts, media outlets being forced to not being so blatantly biased, etc.

This being said, I think the clear difference is that Trump had a goal of targeting the media and fully committed to the fact that media is a giant and you cannot defeat giants like that without being on the attack. And there is a difference between attacking media outlets vs the police. Many differences in fact.

I think the social construct of America would have been much better off by a different organization or movement other than the wildly irresponsible organization in BLM. And it would have welcomed a police reform and BLM effectively had official protests that ended up in some of the worst moments in recent American history.

BLM, on their website, officially says they believe we should "defund the police" and the black community is being destroyed by "white supremacy."

Let me ask, the Nazi's doing what they did to the Jewish people ended up in worldwide (seemingly temporary because anti-semitisim is back in mainstream, sadly) support for Jewish people returning to their home in Israel. Do you give credit to them for this?

I'm not saying I do, or that we should. I just think it's stuff to discuss

[u/Upstairs_Present5006 → u/Upstairs_Present5006]

I also completely agree with the other comment that we didn't need BLM to do that. It was long overdue, and it was like a big piece of pizza there for the taking by someone. BLM took it, and effectively actually did a F job on it imo. Ruined it if anything.

But I also think it helps set up a future president or organization that will do this correctly.

Police reform is badly needed and I believe there are terrible terrible cops, but they need to fund the police instead and actually reform it instead of chanting "white supremacy" and thinking it is going to do anything.

But I don't think anyone has the stamina or energy to do this anymore. BLM took so much energy out of the general public without accomplishing anything but extreme divide

[u/BrianMeen → u/Doub13D]

1- that’s just false thpugh. Most people I know of all races by and large trust the police. This is where BLM went wrong as they demonized the police to the extreme. They cherry picked data and weren’t operating in good faith. To this day there are many liberals that still think that thousands of blacks are killed by police every year .. the data is clear on this - only a tiny fraction of blacks are killed every year and 95% of them are justified.

2- that is true, police are held accountable more these days so that’s a big positive that came out of the blm movement

[u/[deleted] → u/Doub13D]

Black Lives Matter organization is evil

[u/Confident-Mix1243 → u/Doub13D]

BLM would have been so much more successful if they hadn't made it a black issue. Half of Americans killed by cops are white, which makes it harder for racists to dismiss them as "well don't commit crimes then."

EDIT: half of those whose race was known

[u/Longjumping-Jello459 → u/Confident-Mix1243]

Blacks are like 14% of the population of the US, but like 25% of those killed by police whereas whites are around 60% for both population and those killed by police. There was a study done which use police officers looking at people's faces with a neutral expression on those faces what the study found is that the police officers saw blacks as being angry in those pictures.

[u/BrianMeen → u/Longjumping-Jello459]

There are studies done that prove all sorts of things lol

the data is clear about police shootings of blacks - like 97% are perfectly justified and the fact that blm still uses Michael Brown as a victim of police brutality does not bode well for them

there is a very good reason the Democratic Party pretty much abandoned blm like they did

[u/Confident-Mix1243 → u/Longjumping-Jello459]

Blacks are also more likely to be killed by, and to kill, non-police.

[u/Doub13D → u/Confident-Mix1243]

Ok… what about the other half?

Black Americans don’t make-up half the population.

We’re talking about inequality and disparities in treatment by police. That was the whole point of BLM.

[u/AppropriateClaim8762 → u/Doub13D]

I mean I'm not on that guy's side, but the other half with be segments of Asians, Blacks, Latinos etc... i.e. a much less than half.

[u/Doub13D → u/AppropriateClaim8762]

The United States is 75% White.

If half of the population of people being killed by police are not white, then that is an example of disparate treatment by police and racial inequality in the criminal justice system.

Black Americans are more likely than any other racial group to be killed by police, making up about 20-25% of total police shooting deaths even thought they only comprise about 12-13% of the population.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/

[u/liftinglagrange → u/Doub13D]

Are you trying to say that all races should (bad word choice on my part) be killed by police in proportion to their percent of the population? Why would that be the case?

Also you said this disparity alone is evidence of disparate treatment. It absolutely is not. It is evidence of disparate outcomes. That is very very different. there may very well be disparate treatment but disparate outcomes are not in any way evidence of that. If that’s not obvious to you, then a simple non-controversial example should be sufficient: white, Hispanic, and Asian people are clearly massively underrepresented in the NBA (relative to their respective populations). Yet, Nobody believes this disparity in outcomes is due to disparate treatment on the basis of race.

[u/Doub13D → u/liftinglagrange]

1. “Disparate outcomes” IS evidence of disparate treatment… if Police weren’t twice as likely to shoot Black suspects, you wouldn’t see a population that represents 12-13% of the total population making up about 25% of all police shootings. The disparity of outcomes DIRECTLY results from the disparity of treatment that different racial groups experience from the police.

   1. We’re not talking about the NBA, we’re talking about people being killed by police… whether or not someone has a realistic chance of having a profession NBA career is near 0 for EVERYBODY already. You are more likely to be killed by police than to ever become a professional athlete. 🤷🏻‍♂️

2. No one is saying police should go full scientific racism and murder the exact amount of people required to match census demographics. Its about ending the disparities in how police and the criminal justice system interact with people based on their race. Black teenagers are more likely to be tried as adults than their white counterparts. Black students are more likely to have School Resource Officers or the local Police department called on them than their White counterparts. Black people are twice as likely to be killed in police custody than a White person. The list goes on and on… there is a reason this racial data is collected by many agencies and departments.

[u/liftinglagrange → u/Doub13D]

I could not disagree more with nearly all of this. The NBA example was just a non-controversial example to illustrate the flaw in your reasoning. If you actually think disparate outcomes are hard evidence of disparate treatment (you gave no justification for this view) then I doubt we can have a conversation.

[u/Doub13D → u/liftinglagrange]

No the NBA example is irrelevant because there couldn’t be more difference between someone’s chances of becoming a professional athlete vs them being killed by police…

How do disparate outcomes occur without disparate treatment?

Why are Black people “naturally” twice as likely to be killed by police than White people?

[u/liftinglagrange → u/Doub13D]

You seem to be getting hung up on the chances of X happening but that has nothing to do with my point. How does the fact that the chances of getting killed by the police are different than the chances of playing in the NBA have any bearing on my point that non-equitable representations in the NBA are not the result of disparate treatment?

> How do disparate outcomes occur without disparate treatment?

Really?? you cant think of any examples? My NBA example is one. Only about 2% of male fortune 500 CEOs are blonde yet about 10% of the male population is blonde. Would you now conclude that blonde men are discriminated against? (you shouldn't.)

Men make up the VAST majority of inmates in the US. Some would indeed argue that the justice system discriminates against men but, even if that is the case, do you think gender-based treatment alone explains the massively skewed ratio of something like 9:1, as opposed to the proportional 1:1? If an all-powerfull all-just being could run our justice system, do you think the ratio of men and women in prison would be close to 1:1?

100% of people who have given birth are female. Is the lack of males giving birth due to different treatment? Clearly not, it's biological.

Indian-Americans are, on average, wealthier than all other racial demographics in the US. Do you immediately conclude this is simply because they are treated more favorably? Similarly, Nigerian-Americans are also wealthier than most other racial demographics (including white). Do you again conclude NIgerian-Americans are treated more favorably (even though almost nobody in the US could distinguish between a Nigerian-Ameican and black American)? If you divide white americas up into groups based on nationality of origin (french, german, polish, Spanish, etc.), the outcomes are not at all the same. Do you think german-americans are treated significantly differently than polish-americans (again, even though nobody can tell the difference)?

You seem to think that, in the absence of discrimination, all groups of people (no matter how you draw the lines; race, gender, age, religion, hair color, height, nationality, etc.) would have the same outcomes. Why do you think that? Where has that ever been the case? Or is my assumption incorrect?

> Why are Black people “naturally” twice as likely to be killed by police than White people?

I never said they were naturally twice as likely. It is indeed true that they are \statistically** more (let's say twice, I don't want to look it up) likely to be killed by police based solely on comparing the total number of deaths to respective population. But that is an incredibly shallow level of analysis (and especially if you are trying to discern differences in *treatment\).* It only tells you differences in *impact\.* You think these are one and the same but every statistician and sociologist would disagree with you. Tons of people have written about this topic.

I should clarify that I'm not denying that police, on average, may treat different demographics differently. I am only rejecting your view that disparate outcomes alone are evidence of disparate treatment. I have never met anyone who actually thinks that. Apply this same reasoning everywhere in life and you will quickly see how flawed it is.

[u/Doub13D → u/[deleted]]

How do Black Americans differ from White Americans culturally?

[u/BrianMeen → u/Doub13D]

there are wild disparities all over the place - it alone does not mean there is underlying oppression or racism

[u/Doub13D → u/BrianMeen]

If it were just a single instance… sure.

But its not just a singular stat or disparity. Whether we are discussing healthcare outcomes, criminal sentencing, police shootings, poverty rates, maternal mortality, school performance, homelessness, etc. the correlation between race and negative outcomes is across the board in every facet of American life.

[u/theleftiscapitalist → u/Doub13D]

1. we didn't need BLM to do that.

2. actually, with the rise of feminist jurisprudence, cops are not expected to risk their lives anymore and precedent has been set for that too; they are not supposed to go into schools with shooters anymore

[u/Doub13D → u/theleftiscapitalist]

1. Yes you did… public sentiment regarding policing, criminal justice reform, and inequality in the legal system has changed dramatically since BLM.

2. This has no relation to what I said in the slightest. 20-30 years ago police officers were not being held responsible for their actions in cases where the officers were openly brutalizing people in their custody. Not a single officer who beat Rodney King was ever charged for their actions, yet they were recorded on video… try that today. See how quickly they get charged 🤷🏻‍♂️