Thanks Rebecca!
I wish you were better at explaining too. Just after I objected to racism being characterized as "best known as a system" rather than individual discrimination, you present some examples of the latter. I understand that there IS racial discrimination and racism in present U.S. society and it does NOT make the lives of blacks any easier, just the opposite. You don't need to convince me that that happens. But that was not the subject of our discussion.
My point is that racist terminology and discrimination is not decreased by having a whole big BLATANTLY RACIST movement, obviously racist (to my mind) even in it's name, promoting one race and seeing everything in terms of the color of people's skin.
It is one approach and one can be sympathetic to why it arose, but I think it is FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG-HEADED. I say that partly because I find it somewhat lacking in concern for truth.
Also, attitudes are important, and it seems some of the major problems come in interactions with police. If people tend to resist arrest that is not helpful, and spurring them on to do so even more is to be headed in the wrong direction. Such lack of respect becomes (is) mutual and it tends to amplify in both directions.
Negative attitudes on both sides build, and one wonders where it will all end.
If racial balance existed in our social structures, I would likely agree about promoting one race even in a name like that, but in the current atmosphere where non-dominant races get overlooked and/or oppressed, it's a way of putting some emphasis on those racial issues. Ideally, once we would reach this goal of racial equity, there would be no need for groups (or names) like Black Lives Matter because it would be clear to everyone already that black lives *do* matter. We're just not at that point, and I don't even think we're really even close to that point.
As far as interactions with police go, there is a big difference in how white people and black people perceive of the police, based on our historic and personal experiences. To a white person, we tend to see police as people who are honorable, who are here to help us when we need it, to "protect and serve", and we usually have no reason to fear them when we are obedient to the law.
Black people often have very different experiences in their lifetimes. Police are to be feared because even if you did nothing wrong, they still suspect you and may abuse you. You are guilty until proven innocent. The police do not exist to protect you, but to hurt you. Black people can literally be terrified to be pulled over during a routine traffic stop, so they may "act guilty" or insist they did nothing wrong even before being accused, or even run. Police in some areas recognize this problem and have created more outreach in order to improve relationships and trust between themselves and minority communities.
It's difficult for us as white people to understand this level of underlying fear because it's not something that we usually experience unless we really have done something wrong.
And then when we do break the law, white people and black people can get treated very differently both by the police and the criminal justice system, even if it's not always intentional.
I definitely don't have all the answers to these problems, and it's possible that Black Lives Matter may turn out to not have been the best approach long-term, but I still support what they are trying to accomplish with it and understand why "all lives matter" wouldn't be better due to the whitewashing effect it would have. A think a lot of conflicts over this name is a discrepancy between what many feel *should* be vs. the current reality.
I would look forward to the day when these issues no longer trouble any of us, where we don't see everything in terms of race, but being that we are all humans full of sin and living in societal structures saturated with sin in a fallen world, it's unlikely that we would reach this point on our own, before Jesus returns to set up his kingdom.
