#BlackLivesMatter movement.

I'm very concerned about this movement. At first, I kind of liked their idealism and pushing for change.

But now, I'm becoming really concerned. I've noticed that some of the people in the movement use the "Black Power" fist, and that their organization is very decentralized, and refuses to condemn anything any individual does in their name, no matter how awful or distasteful.

I'm starting to see them as somewhat radical, more in the vein of the Black Panthers or Nation of Islam than Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. I have my doubts about what they really stand for. I'm becoming suspicious of their motives and methods, and also wondering exactly who is behind them.

I've heard their fringe elements calling for the deaths of White people and cops, and they're attacking even Democrats with supportive policies.

Black people in general seem to be getting more and more radical... I had to unfriend all three of the Black friends I had on Facebook, because they were saying increasingly hateful things about Whites and I just couldn't take it.

I mean, it started out slow, with just occasional things like "White privilege," but then it got to the point where they would say "White people's feelings don't matter" in response to concerns about violent protests, as if White people didn't have a right to take issue with riots, crime, or looting.

I'm worried about whether things will get out of hand, and whether anyone will be willing or able to stop these people in this case. The whole situation has pushed me to the right politically. If I vote at all, I'm likely to vote Republican. I'm starting to feel like being a White person in this country is like being a French aristocrat waiting for the angry peasants to storm the Bastille.

I should note, I'm concerned about the effect of the movement. I don't dislike Black people, and I know not all of them support the movement's tactics. I just dislike how poorly the movement is inspiring them to treat White people, and the feeling that they're being radicalized. This topic may be incendiary, so feel free to close it if you think it's bad idea to discuss it.

I have no idea what kind of chart we could use to analyze it, though. I know that the movement was started in 2012 around the time of the Trayvon Martin thing, but I don't have a time or a location. The earliest mention of the hashtag I could find on Twitter was 5:18 PM on April 11, 2012... but even then, I don't have any idea where that was, what time zone it was in, or whether it was actually the first use of the phrase.

Well, apparently the hashtag was used a couple of times before the official movement was founded in 2013. I managed to track down the founders, and it turns out two of the three founders have visited the White House to meet with presidential staff, one of them spoke with Michelle Obama, and they're mostly community organizers or activists by trade. They may have been connected with the Obama campaign.

Anyway, the first person to tweet the hashtag as part of the official BLM movement lived in Brooklyn, NY. That's as good a location as I'm going to get for the start of the movement, so here we go with the chart:



I'm not sure how to analyze a mundane chart, so I'll just start by seeing if the Sabian Symbols are appropriate.

AC: Virgo 26: A Boy With A Censer Serves The Priest Near The Altar

DC: Pisces 26: Watching The Very Thin Moon Crescent Appearing At Sunset, Different People Realize That The Time Has Come To Go Ahead With Their Different Projects

MC: Gemini 25: A Gardener Trimming Large Palm Trees

IC: Sagittarius 25: A Chubby Boy On A Hobby-Horse

Sun: Cancer 24: A Woman And Two Men Castaways On A Small Island Of The South Seas

Moon: Libra 17: A Retired Sea Captain Watches Ships Entering And Leaving The Harbor

Mercury: Cancer 15: In A Sumptuous Dining Hall Guests Relax After Partaking Of A Huge Banquet

Venus: Leo 22: A Carrier Pigeon Fulfilling Its Mission

Mars: Cancer 2: A Man On A Magic Carpet Hovers Over A Large Area Of Land

Jupiter: Cancer 5: At A Railroad Crossing, An Automobile is Wrecked By A Train

Saturn: Scorpio 5: A Massive Rocky Shore Resist The Pounding Of The Sea

Uranus: Aries 13: An Unexploded Bomb Reveals An Unsuccessful Social Protest

Neptune: Pisces 5: A Church Bazaar

Pluto: Capricorn 10: An Albatross Feeding From The Hand Of A Sailor

N. Node: Scorpio 14: Telephone Lineman At Work Installling New Connections

S. Node: Taurus 14: On The Beach, Children Play While Shellfish Grope At The Edge Of The Water

Chiron: Pisces 14: A Lady Wrapped In A Large Stole Of Fox Fur

Lilith: Cancer 5: At A Railroad Crossing, An Automobile is Wrecked By A Train

What I'm seeing in the symbols seems more like revolutions, a service being rendered, and accidents rather than a drive for justice or peace.

Anyone else have any opinions on the chart, or on the movement in general? I mostly put the chart here as a talking point, since I'm trying to get a discussion going.

I don't mind if someone disagrees with my interpretation of things.

athenian200 said:

I'm very concerned about this movement. At first, I kind of liked their idealism and pushing for change.

But now, I'm becoming really concerned. I've noticed that some of the people in the movement use the "Black Power" fist, and that their organization is very decentralized, and refuses to condemn anything any individual does in their name, no matter how awful or distasteful.

I'm starting to see them as somewhat radical, more in the vein of the Black Panthers or Nation of Islam than Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. I have my doubts about what they really stand for. I'm becoming suspicious of their motives and methods, and also wondering exactly who is behind them.

I've heard their fringe elements calling for the deaths of White people and cops, and they're attacking even Democrats with supportive policies.

Black people in general seem to be getting more and more radical... I had to unfriend all three of the Black friends I had on Facebook, because they were saying increasingly hateful things about Whites and I just couldn't take it.

I mean, it started out slow, with just occasional things like "White privilege," but then it got to the point where they would say "White people's feelings don't matter" in response to concerns about violent protests, as if White people didn't have a right to take issue with riots, crime, or looting.

I'm worried about whether things will get out of hand, and whether anyone will be willing or able to stop these people in this case. The whole situation has pushed me to the right politically. If I vote at all, I'm likely to vote Republican. I'm starting to feel like being a White person in this country is like being a French aristocrat waiting for the angry peasants to storm the Bastille.

I should note, I'm concerned about the effect of the movement. I don't dislike Black people, and I know not all of them support the movement's tactics. I just dislike how poorly the movement is inspiring them to treat White people, and the feeling that they're being radicalized. This topic may be incendiary, so feel free to close it if you think it's bad idea to discuss it.

I have no idea what kind of chart we could use to analyze it, though. I know that the movement was started in 2012 around the time of the Trayvon Martin thing, but I don't have a time or a location. The earliest mention of the hashtag I could find on Twitter was 5:18 PM on April 11, 2012... but even then, I don't have any idea where that was, what time zone it was in, or whether it was actually the first use of the phrase.

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Blame the police for shooting black people at will...it's pathetic....shooting people in the back whilst they are running away, using excessive force ending in death no sort that before being concerned about movements that someone else has enabled in the first place

emily23 said:

Blame the police for shooting black people at will...it's pathetic....shooting people in the back whilst they are running away, using excessive force ending in death no sort that before being concerned about movements that someone else has enabled in the first place

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Well, the problem is that the facts don't support that interpretation. They've been cherry-picking situations where Black people are shot by White cops under questionable circumstances, and plastering them all over the place to try and make a point.

The statistics show that the cops are no less likely to shoot White people, and that White homicides don't disproportionately target Blacks. Both Whites and Blacks are much, much more likely to kill people of their own race, usually people that they know. The image people have of a murderer walking up to some random person and killing them over race is very rare, because the murderer usually knows the victim and hates them for some personal reason.

Blacks are, in fact, arrested disproportionately, but that is primarily because of poverty. Now, one could argue that the poverty causes desperation, which in turn causes crime and arrest, but that's not the same thing as the cops systematically targeting Blacks. There is institutionalized racism in this country, but this isn't the 1960s. It's mostly job and housing discrimination, things like redlining or gerrymandering. In other words, the racism might be putting them into poverty, but arresting them for crimes they commit as a result of that poverty, isn't racism.

You speak of them being shot in the back of the head, but in most cases the assertions made have been shown to be false through investigations. Some of the cases were examples of police brutality, but several of them involve conspiracy theories about the cop's motives that aren't supported by evidence, and which do not move the juries. Even if this did happen in one or two instances, a single incident does not prove a trend.

Have you noticed how they're focusing on single situations rather than statistics? There's a reason for that.

In other words, I think the BLM movement is at worst a plot to create racial tension started by Barack Obama, or at best an emotional overreaction to the Trayvon Martin case rooted in past traumatic experiences. A form of collective Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, if you will. But what they are saying is simply not the truth.

I'm not claiming they have no right to riot, or that there is no racism. I simply believe their emphasis to be misguided.

Wa

athenian200 said:

There is institutionalized racism in this country, but this isn't the 1960s. .

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Could have fooled me
basically black people were brought over to the USA as slaves, they did nothng wrong, they were victims of trafficking, rape, slave trade, together and treated as animal s, whilst the white criminal yanks thought for some inexplicable reason they were above them, they were often killed by bigots supremacists and the courts, so many many wrongs committed against them. white Americans should feel lucky they didn't take revenge, they made their way, they bowed their heads, they integrated, they made music, and they are STILL being shot at will because they're black...that means some white yanks are thick! And the police officers who are insane reason feel the right to shoot need to be be STRIPPED off their damned badges as they are a danger to society, nasty little bastewards
I would like someone to explain why the USA why is supposed that've hac the most democratic and up beat system invented hundreds of years ago relying heavily on justice and freedom would have laws that said black people couldn't ride on a bloody bus in certain seats or drink off the same water fountain as white people...I watched a film on rosa parks and I was bloody shocked at the sadistic police

emily23 said:

Could have fooled me
basically black people were brought over to the USA as slaves, they did nothng wrong, they were victims of trafficking, rape, save trade, together and treated as animals, whilst the white yanks thought for some inexplicable reason they were above them, they were often killed by bigots supremacists and the courts, so many m any wrings committed against them. white Americans should feel lucky they didn't take revenge, they made their way, they bowed their heads, and they are STILL being shot at will because they're black...that means some white yanks are thick! And the police officers who for are insane reason feel the right to shoot need to be be STRIPPED off their damned badges as they are a danger to society, nasty little bastewards

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You aren't exactly negating my argument.

No one is arguing that slavery or sexual abuse was acceptable. I agree with you that the history is appalling. There was a belief that Blacks were not fully human, and the caste system in Europe at the time always put the darkest skinned people on the bottom. That system turned out to be unfortunate for Africans, because they were the darkest race of people ever encountered by Europeans. The Bible was used to justify slavery, and Darwin's theory of evolution didn't help matters either. Certainly, those beliefs were immoral.

I suspect the main reason they didn't take revolt or take revenge is because we outnumbered them significantly. In Haiti, the slaves outnumbered the Whites significantly and they did in fact rise up and take their revenge. Even today, Blacks are still only 15% of the US population.

Blacks have freedom in this country primarily because we realized that slavery was wrong and chose to give them citizenship. If the majority of White people hadn't wanted Blacks to have any rights or freedoms, they would not have any to this day. Blacks never had the power to make us do anything. Those decisions were made on principle, not because Blacks intimidated or coerced us. We are far from perfect or innocent, but we certainly are not as evil today as BLM would suggest.

Certainly, there might be cops out there that discriminate against Black people. That doesn't mean that all or most cops discriminate against Black people. You seem to expect that all discrimination can be stopped, and that's not possible. There will always be people who hate others because of their race. We discourage it, but it's inevitable due to human nature.

Of course, we deal with people who are found to have killed people because of a prejudice. It isn't accepted in our society. Conversely, there are Blacks that resent White people as well, that would kill us because of our race rather than who we are as individuals. However, most Black people would not do such a thing. Neither would most White people.

I would like someone to explain why the USA why is supposed that've hac the most democratic and up beat system invented hundreds of years ago relying heavily on justice and freedom would have laws that said black people couldn't ride on a bloody bus in certain seats or drink off the same water fountain as white people...I watched a film on rosa parks and I was bloody shocked at the sadistic police

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You're talking about Jim Crow laws. Those laws mostly existed in the former Confederate states, the same states that wanted to keep Blacks as slaves during the Civil War. They were still uncomfortable with Black equality, and these laws existed to try and maintain a power differential and a semblance of separation between Whites and Blacks. They also feared Blacks would resent them for slavery, and didn't want them in close proximity. These states were largely rural, and the majority of Whites in the US did not live there. That is why their way of life did not become the national standard.

The point you're missing is that just because that was true then, doesn't mean that every White cop killing a Black man is an instance of the same kind of systematic oppression today. Again, I think many Blacks are so traumatized by their past that they see conspiracies everywhere, and have a tendency to distrust authority.

I take everything you say on board Athenian
But the fact remains doesn't it that an extraordinary amount of white police have shot and killed innocent people, and even if they were not innocent had no right To shoot them.....oh and were mostly black people

Unless you can come up with cases of whites chased by police shot in the back or used five officers to restrain but accidentally killing them

Besides not a black problem propaganda thing when it's FOX NEWS telling us all

PS Thank you for all the history and facts anyway, and yes I was letting off steam about the past, I appreciate where you're coming from 100 per cent BUT these recent events are unsettling and shouldn't even be happening

emily23 said:

I take everything you say on board Athenian
But the fact remains doesn't it that an extraordinary amount of white police have shot and killed innocent people, and even if they were not innocent had no right To shoot them.....oh and were mostly black people

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That's actually not true, statistically speaking.



Certainly, many Black people are killed, but much of the discrepancy can be explained by the disproportionate poverty in Black neighborhoods. Quite a few White people are killed by police.

Unless you can come up with cases of whites chased by police shot in the back or used five officers to restrain but accidentally killing them

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You're talking about two very specific (and tragic) cases. I know about Eric Garner, and his example was one of the few clear cases of police brutality that was actually uncovered by the BLM movement. But you can't extrapolate two cases to a pattern of violence against Blacks occurring all over the country.

If you're looking for a specific instance of a cop shooting an unarmed White person in a questionable case, though, I do have some. I should warn you, though, that some of them use some rather offensive terminology to describe their opinion of the mainstream media. And one of the victims used racial slurs against their arresting officer in one case. I mean to present the facts, although I don't agree with their spin.

http://www.westernjournalism.com/uh-oh-black-police-officer-shoots-unarmed-white-man-wheres-riot/

http://www.texasobserver.org/james-whitehead-robert-arnold-shades-gray-orange/

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswi...d-no-one-took-to-the-streets-is-that-a-proble

It's just not amplified as much by the media when this kind of thing happens. Out of all the hundreds of Whites killed by cops, do you really think none of them were unarmed people shot under questionable circumstances? Of course that has happened, it just isn't news to us. I don't think it indicates racism against White people, so much as that most White people tend to perceive it as an issue with the police or with the individual rather than a race problem. Even when the cop is Black and the victim is White.

PS Thank you for all the history and facts anyway, and yes I was letting off steam about the past, I appreciate where you're coming from 100 per cent BUT these recent events are unsettling and shouldn't even be happening

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These kind of things have always happened more often than you would think. With so many policemen walking around patrolling such a large country, a few of them are bound to shoot people when they shouldn't. There are a lot of guns in this country, a lot of armed cops and a high potential for armed criminals. This stuff isn't happening more often than usual, they're just talking about it and focusing on it more than usual.

You just can't have that many armed people running around doing potentially violent jobs, and expect everyone to come out okay.

What happens is wrong and tragic, to be certain, but I'm not convinced that this tragedy is racially motivated. It may have more to do with gun culture, drug laws, poverty, and an overly militarized police force.

I don't think blank statistics help here....maybe more white people have been shot by police, the relevant statistic would be how many whites and how many blacks have been illegally shot at and killed, or how many have had excessive force used when arrested/put in a cell, leading to death,it may be a bit different


thank you for your reply Athenian, there is alot to think about and digest there, of course I am not suggesting all police are thugs or that blacks are targeted institutionally, America has moved on from the bad old days, my complaint is about the obvious miscarriages of justice which are not addressed and dealt with but rather have been camouflaged with a bunch of bull

emily23 said:

I don't think blank statistics help here....maybe more white people have been shot by police, the relevant statistic would be how many whites and how many blacks have been illegally shot at and killed, or how many have had excessive force used when arrested/put in a cell, leading to death,it may be a bit different

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It's rare for any police shooting to be regarded as illegal, even if it's considered questionable. The only people I know who actually trust their police departments are those living in middle or upper class areas that have their own police force. If you live in a poor or unincorporated area... a lot of times they're overworked and only care about generating revenue through traffic tickets or something.

thank you for your reply Athenian, there is alot to think about and digest there, of course I am not suggesting all police are thugs or that blacks are targeted institutionally, America has moved on from the bad old days, my complaint is about the obvious miscarriages of justice which are not addressed and dealt with but rather have been camouflaged with a bunch of bull

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Yeah, if you look at the past, the percentage of Black people shot by police has actually gone down. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the disparity was so huge that you couldn't deny it was racism. That's why I don't understand the protests happening now, when the percentage is so much smaller than it was back then.

Police are given quite a bit of latitude, and often get away with killing people in the line of duty. Even if they shoot a White person. The badge just comes with that kind of power.

I mean, we could argue about the 782 Whites vs 464 Blacks, compare them to population percentages, argue about poverty factors, etc. But there's one very meaningful statistic that gets lost when we talk about this in terms of race.

1,548 people of all races were killed by police in this time period alone. Maybe we should be more worried about police violence against civilians in general, rather than arguing over who is getting killed more. I mean, whether it's a Black cop killing a White man, or a White cop killing a Black man, we're arguing who has it worse rather than focusing on the bigger picture and seeing that we all have it a lot worse than people living in other first world countries do. I think they protect them because they're cops or deputized individuals who get trusted with authority, rather than because they're White.

I guess I just wonder why police brutality has become a Black vs. White issue when people of all races are dying at the hands of police under questionable circumstances. Especially in a day and age when the racial disparity in police killings is lower than ever.

They could easily just go out and kill more unarmed White people to fudge the statistics, make the Black slice of the pie resemble their percentage in the population, without actually solving the problem. At that point, they would have eliminated the racism, but no one would be any better off for it. I don't think that's what most people want, though... at least, I really, really hope not.

In the end, it's the question of whether police have the right to shoot people dead...IMo no, they do not....it is not up to them to make that decision UNLESS lives are saved in the process in an emergency violent situation,which is clearly not happening here in so many cases

The "black issue" has not gone away, certainly in some parts of the USA, and even if statistics are lower, it fuels what is left, and if anythng the authorities due to the country's hairy should be making extra roads into dealing with issues rather than OKing a gun, but as I said the issue seems to be the go ahead given to police which I find disgusting but then again I think the whole area of capital murder is, with executions too

I am not that impressed by the USA hard line so called moral police and justice system..(not that they are the only ones with major flaws) ...in fact I believe there is somethng psycopathic ally wrong with it.....but somewhere some social historian knows the reason....I cNt imagne the laudable constitution has anything to do with it...then, that was too brilliant to hope for

PS I don't think anyone for the only reason of being black or being poor or unemployed or anythng like that should be given any kind of "privilege or special treatment" in case I gave that impression, just to be treated equally....as we have had enough of rich criminals getting away with all sorts and enough poor innocents banged up at will or killed by the "authorities"

emily23 said:

In the end, it's the question of whether police have the right to shoot people dead...IMo no, they do not....it is not up to them to make that decision UNLESS lives are saved in the process in an emergency violent situation,which is clearly not happening here in so many cases

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Well, of course they don't have the right to do it, but think about the kind of people that are attracted to police work, along with the history of Old West sheriffs and gunslingers. You give enough people a gun and a badge, some of them start abusing their authority. Even on an online forum, someone that gets appointed Moderator can have the power go their head and start giving frivolous infractions, and that's just a volunteer position.

The "black issue" has not gone away, certainly in some parts of the USA, and even if statistics are lower, it fuels what is left, and if anythng the authorities due to the country's hairy should be making extra roads into dealing with issues rather than OKing a gun, but as I said the issue seems to be the go ahead given to police which I find disgusting but then again I think the whole area of capital murder is, with executions too

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Well, I dislike executions and murder as well. Actually, I hate violence in general.

Oh, I'm not saying that it's gone away, just that it's generally gotten better rather than worse over time. We still have tons of people alive who were born before the civil rights movement. Once that generation retires from from politics, things should start to improve a bit more rapidly. 50 years seems like forever because technology moves so quickly, but it's really not a long time.

I am not that impressed by the USA hard line so called moral police and justice system..(not that they are the only ones with major flaws) ...in fact I believe there is somethng psycopathic ally wrong with it.....but somewhere some social historian knows the reason....I cNt imagne the laudable constitution has anything to do with it...then, that was too brilliant to hope for

PS I don't think anyone for the only reason of being black or being poor or unemployed or anythng like that should be given any kind of "privilege or special treatment" in case I gave that impression, just to be treated equally....as we have had enough of rich criminals getting away with all sorts and enough poor innocents banged up at will or killed by the "authorities"

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I've long had the opinion that racism is mostly kept alive to distract people from class issues. I think the US was practically founded by pirates and merchants who didn't want to pay British taxes. There were several pirate republics popping up all over the Caribbean back in those days, we were just the largest and most successful one.

I think wealth inequality is the big problem in the US. The middle class is shrinking, no one can find work, and people are looking for someone to blame. The wealthy elites don't want the poor to blame them, so the left gets the Blacks angry with Whites by blaming their ills on institutional racism and past injustices to the point that they lash out at us, and then the right turns around and promise to protect the Whites from Black criminality.

If the working class were more unified, they wouldn't be able to get away with this stuff.

I agree with lots of that. Class subjugation is a massive crime in the world, race comes second, the dichotomy in the USA is it purports to give the same chance to all, which it clearly does not alot of the time, money and power bloody rules still, still it's a nice ideal. how many hundreds of years do they need to make it real. perhaps Pluto Uranus transits will force some change on the mundane level.


Anyway I am unqualified in this area so going to but out of the conversation, I was just posting as I saw things. thank you for deconstructing certain things and bringing up others.