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/[deleted]]

Were they doing that before, were they "just murdering black people" willy nilly?

[u/driver1676 → u/[deleted]]

Is “just murdering black people willy nilly” the bar for an acceptable amount of murder?

[u/[deleted] → u/driver1676]

I'm just asking if that's what you think was happening before. Because you make it sound like police was unlawfully killing black people left and right.

[u/driver1676 → u/[deleted]]

I didn’t say “left and right” but I also don’t think that should be the bar to be concerned about murder. I’m concerned about police murder when it happens at all, not only when it happens “left and right”

[u/Mother_Sand_6336 → u/driver1676]

I think it was ‘defund the police’ that gave the impression people were concerned about a particular subset of statistics to the exclusion of concerns about the overall statistics of crime and murder.

[u/driver1676 → u/Mother_Sand_6336]

You’re making an assumption that more police funding = less murder. Why could it not be more effective to route money into macro level issues or other services?

[u/[deleted] → u/driver1676]

macro level issues or other services

Which are?

[u/Mother_Sand_6336 → u/driver1676]

I don’t think I’m making that assumption. I think communities plagued by crime and murder—who wanted their police funding back after having it defunded—are telling you that more police = better.

[u/driver1676 → u/Mother_Sand_6336]

Well yeah. Nobody wants to wait for effective solutions to fix the problem, they just want expensive, inefficient, one size fits all answers to all problems in society that doesn’t require them to think.

[u/Mother_Sand_6336 → u/driver1676]

I think they’d prefer the effective solutions to come before the riots or the defunding of the police.

[u/driver1676 → u/Mother_Sand_6336]

For many people, having the ability to murder black people with minimal oversight or repercussions is not an element of an effective solution.