1) If black people care about black lives, why don’t they care about "black-on-black crime"?
The first thing to ask is why do we expect black people to pick between the two.
According to plenty of organizations and polling, black people care just as much about crime within their communities as they do about addressing a discriminatory criminal justice system that targets them.
According to the FBI's 2014 Uniform Crime Reports, close to 90 percent of African-American homicides were committed by other African Americans. Meanwhile 82 percent of white American homicide victims were killed by other white people.
The reason: crime, like housing, is racially segregated in the US, which means it's way more likely that a crime committed against someone is going to be by someone who lives in their neighborhood and probably looks a lot like them. The term "white-on-white crime," is essentially non-existent, even though it does happen.
Black Lives Matter isn’t just about the loss of life, It’s about the lack of consequences when black lives are taken at the hands of police.
Besides, the myth of "black-on-black crime" distract from the fact that police brutality and crime within black communities both derive from structural inequalities.
The truth is black people aren’t more violent or more likely to commit crimes than anyone else. The reality is that because of a history of institutional racism, black communities have higher poverty rates, suffer from poorly funded schools, and are more likely to be targeted by police.
2) Are you saying only Black Lives Matter?
No
This movement isn’t saying black lives matter more than anyone else’s. It’s saying that black lives should matter, but the way that our justice system, our media, and our police have been operating, suggests that they do not.
In each of these situations, black people are devalued in ways that other groups don’t necessarily experience. Black Lives Matter is just trying to make sure people don’t overlook those differences, and how they acutely impact black people’s lives.
It’s perfectly fine for a movement to focus on issues specific to one marginalized group. Gay bars aren’t unfair to straight people. A breast cancer walk isn’t unfair to other forms of cancer, and ‘Save the rainforest’ isn’t saying you hate all other trees."
3) Aren’t there way more white victims of police violence?
This answer is less straightforward.
Yes, technically more white people are victims of police violence. According to the Washington Post’s data on police killings, there have been 1,502 shot and killed by on-duty police since January 1, 2015. Nearly half of them (732 people) were white. Black people accounted for 381 of the victims.
But the problem is that black people also only account for 13 percent of the population compared to white people who make up 62 percent of the US population today.
This means that that small number actually makes a big difference, and that, when we stop taking the number at face value, it actually shows black people are being killed at disproportionately higher rates than their white counterparts.
If an unarmed citizen is killed by the police, or an armed citizen under is killed under suspicious circumstances people should be upset no matter what the victim’s race. This isn’t a competition.
But number versus rate makes it seem like there really is a competition instead of talking about just how serious America’s policing problem is.
Sadly, police violence is a problem in many communities. But bringing up other victims to discredit the Black Lives Matter movement is pretty disingenuous.
Conversations about Black Lives Matter can be tough. But they're necessary. Hopefully breaking down a few of these myths about the movement helps.
