Black Lives Don't Matter... As Black Lives?

[Beorhtnoth]

When Cambridge University professor Priyamvada Gopal stated "White Lives Don't Matter", certain sections of the internet went into meltdown. Here was prima facie evidence of anti-white prejudice. Gopal received death threats. Throughout all this was forgotten Gopal's statement was edited. She actually said, "White lives don't matter. As white lives."
This casts sentiment in a wholly new light. Distanced from the confrontational and controversial presentation, from politically motivated commentators, Gopal's statement makes sense. It is the life that matters, not the whiteness.

However...

If white lives don't matter for their whiteness, black lives don't matter for their blackness. All lives matter.

Yet "All lives matter" is treated as racist apology.

We really are in a dark place where spurious identity politics obscure simple truths. We are all equally valid. Nonsense verbiage tries to hide this. Don't let it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

"All lives matter" as a statement is absolutely true. As a budding Buddhist, it is a core portion of the philosophy that I try to live my life by, with "all lives" meaning much more than just human lives; it also includes animal, plant, and mineral lives.

However, saying "All lives matter" as a way of avoiding the truth that that a society that has been based for centuries on the philosophy of white supremacy has caused and continues to cause untold harm to people of color is, to me, not acceptable.

Edited to slightly slightly clarify the above and to add: the phrase "black lives matter" is not intended to mean that only black lives matter, or that lives matter because they are black. It is intended to point out that in the perception of many (including me) black lives in the United States have not been treated as mattering in many instances.

[Beorhtnoth]

Without wishing to sound like a one note orchestra, I believe words, and how they are used, is integral to this (as Voronwë highlights).

There is nothing contentious about the statement "Black Lives Matter". There is nothing contentious about the statement "White Lives Matter". Both are, I posit, self evident. Where I believe conflict arises is when one statement is employed to the exclusion of others.

Where Priyamvada Gopal was, rightly in my opinion, called out was not for her original statement, but her subsequent qualifying statements, such as her recommendation to "abolish whiteness".

I find the whole issue of racial identification troubling. It appears the only "pure" race is white, as any person with a non-white grandparent is automatically BAME, or some other umbrella term. How can this be right? It is chillingly similar to the "one drop" determination of Jewishness in Nazi Germany.

This might have spun out from my original intent in posting. Apologies for my comments being confused, but I find the subject of race confusing.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The very idea of "race" was developed to maintain the idea of white supremacy. Among the progenitors of the idea was Thomas Jefferson (who despite righting the words "all men are created equal" owned hundreds of enslaved people) as Robin DiAnglelo notes:

Jefferson suggested that there were natural differences between the races and asked scientists to find them. If science could prove that black people were naturally and inherently inferior (he saw Indigenous people as culturally deficient—a shortcoming that could be remedied), there would be no contradiction between our professed ideals and our actual practices. There were, of course, enormous economic interests in justifying enslavement and colonization. Race science was driven by these social and economic interests, which came to establish cultural norms and legal rulings that legitimized racism and the privileged status of those defined as white.

Drawing on the work of Europeans before them, American scientists began searching for the answer to the perceived inferiority of non-Anglo groups. Illustrating the power of our questions to shape the knowledge we validate, these scientists didn’t ask, “Are blacks (and others) inferior?” They asked, “Why are blacks (and others) inferior?” In less than a century, Jefferson’s suggestion of racial difference became commonly accepted scientific “fact.”

The idea of racial inferiority was created to justify unequal treatment; belief in racial inferiority is not what triggered unequal treatment. Nor was fear of difference. As Ta-Nehisi Coates states, “But race is the child of racism, not the father.” He means that first we exploited people for their resources, not according to how they looked. Exploitation came first, and then the ideology of unequal races to justify this exploitation followed. Similarly, historian Ibram Kendi, in his National Book Award–winning work Stamped from the Beginning, explains: “The beneficiaries of slavery, segregation, and mass incarceration have produced racist ideas of Black people being best suited for or deserving of the confines of slavery, segregation, or the jail cell. Consumers of these racist ideas have been led to believe there is something wrong with Black people, and not the policies that have enslaved, oppressed, and confined so many Black people.” Kendi goes on to argue that if we truly believe that all humans are equal, then disparity in condition can only be the result of systemic discrimination.

DiAngelo, Robin J.. White Fragility (pp. 16-17). Beacon Press. Kindle Edition.

[River]

I find the whole issue of racial identification troubling. It appears the only "pure" race is white, as any person with a non-white grandparent is automatically BAME, or some other umbrella term. How can this be right? It is chillingly similar to the "one drop" determination of Jewishness in Nazi Germany.

It isn't right. One-drop rules are a manifestation of white supremacy. People who were considered black under the one drop rule could be and were enslaved back when that was still legal. They could be and were subjected to the Jim Crow laws back when those were a thing. Nowadays, racial identification is self-declared and more complicated but until white supremacy itself gets rooted out it's not going to go away. It's a nasty thing that has haunted American history and culture since we became the USA and it is something we have been struggling with with varying degrees of openness, pain, and bloodshed for ever since. The BLM movement is only the most recent round of this struggle. We tend to come out the other side of these things in a better spot but the process isn't pretty.

In other words, what Voronwë said.

It would be nice if the kids would shut up long enough for me to submit a post in a timely manner...

[Frelga]

Nazi ideology owed a great deal to the ideas of white supremacism and eugenics that were popular in the US at the time.

This is far from a comprehensive write up, addressing specifically influences of American laws on Nazi legislation, but it's the first that came up on Google. There's lots more.

The Atlantic

What America Taught the Nazis

[Sunsilver]

Jefferson suggested that there were natural differences between the races and asked scientists to find them. If science could prove that black people were naturally and inherently inferior (he saw Indigenous people as culturally deficient—a shortcoming that could be remedied), there would be no contradiction between our professed ideals and our actual practices. There were, of course, enormous economic interests in justifying enslavement and colonization. Race science was driven by these social and economic interests, which came to establish cultural norms and legal rulings that legitimized racism and the privileged status of those defined as white.

And to show how ingrained segregation became in the fabric of American society, I've just discovered that until as recently as 1950, blood bank donations to the American Red Cross were segregated, so a White person would not receive blood from a Black. The Black physician who pioneered blood bank donations quit his job over this segregation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Drew

Out of Drew's work, he was appointed director of the first American Red Cross Blood Bank in February 1941. The blood bank being in charge of blood for use by the U.S. Army and Navy, he disagreed with the exclusion of the blood of African-Americans from plasma-supply networks. In 1942, Drew resigned from his posts after the armed forces ruled that the blood of African-Americans would be accepted but would have to be stored separately from that of whites.[19

[RoseMorninStar]

Pamala Moses: a case I don't know much about but would like to make note of and see how it resolves. Judge orders new trial for US woman sentenced to six years for trying to register to vote.

Ms.Moses is a BLM movement activist who sought to run for mayor. But process of registering to vote issues arose that resulted in her being sentenced to 6 years in prison, a harsh sentence which of course affected her ability to run for mayor. Hmm.

I'm a bit confused about this case. It says that in 2016 she was placed on 2 years probation and in Tennessee those on probation cannot vote, so by 2018 she should have been eligible to register and the registration in question took place in Sept 2019. I must be missing something here-or maybe not. In her first trial there were documents by the criminal justice system that were undisclosed.

[RoseMorninStar]

This is just so horribly sad and awful. A 9-Year-Old Black Girl Was Catching Lanternflies Outside. Her Neighbor Called The Police On Her And Said She “Scared” Him.

The neighbor called 911 after spotting her outside testing an environmentally friendly spotted lanternfly solution she’d made, identifying her as “a little Black woman” with a “hood.”

A 9-year-old Black girl was afraid to leave the house after a neighbor called the police on her while she was catching spotted lanternflies, her mother said in a moving town council speech.