Last week, two black men -- Terence Crutcher and Keith Lamont Scott -- were fatally shot by police officers. These incidents happened within hours of each other, in different parts of the country. Protests have erupted throughout the nation, condemning what is seen to many of us as further examples of racist, violent police practices, and deep-seated institutional racism.

Whenever one of these cases comes to light, I see a pattern emerge. Black people (and allies) lament the death of yet another innocent person of color, while many white people try their best to delegitimize and condemn the Black Lives Matter movement. Rather than simply arguing with these people on Facebook, I thought I would compile evidence-backed rebuttals to the main arguments I encounter. While these are certainly not the complete list, here are my responses to the most common arguments against BLM that I hear from fellow white people.

First up…

Why do people insist on saying black lives matter when all lives matter? Clearly they only care about themselves.

“Black lives matter” has an implied “too” or “also” at the end of it. To declare that black lives are of value is not even related to claiming that white lives are of any lesser value. In fact, it is important to declare and reaffirm the value of black lives exactly because in our society black lives are consistently ignored and valued less than white lives.

Do you show up to cancer fundraising events and starting shouting that healthy lives matter, too? Do you show up to food drives demanding that food also be provided for those who already have it? No? Then you will understand why it is unnecessary to refute “black lives matter” with “all lives matter”.

Police brutality is only caused by a few bad apples, and it’s certainly not an example of racism! Black people are just trying to play the victim.

Many people try to claim that issues of systemic racism and racist police brutality aren’t real, or at least not nearly as bad as people make them out to be. Some of the most common “evidence” I hear to back up this claim is that, “more white people have been killed by the police than black people.”

Let’s look at the numbers, shall we?

According to a Washington Post database, as of July 11 over 1,502 people had been killed by police officers since the beginning of 2015. 732 of these people were white, and 381 were black, with the remaining 382 being another or an unknown race. This leads many people to say, “See? White people are killed by cops at higher rates!” However, in order to extract any worthwhile information from this data, one must first adjust for population. White people make up 62% of the total U.S. population, and black people make up around 13%. However, white people only account for 49% of people killed by police, whereas black people account for 24%. This makes black people 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white people. Once properly analyzed, the data actually confirms what Black Americans know to be true – that they are far more likely to be hurt by a police officer than their white friends. (You can find all of these statistics here. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-white-people-than-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no/?utm_term=.1bf222e8c3c0)

And systemic racism doesn’t end there. It is entrenched in almost every facet of our society, especially the criminal justice system. The War on Drugs -- the effects of which are very real today -- was created directly to target African-Americans. This War on Drugs has lead to the highest mass incarceration rates in modern world history and to black people (who once again make up only 13% of the U.S. population) making up 39% of incarcerated people

Don’t believe me? Listen to one of the men behind it himself.

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities…We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

John Ehrlichman, a direct and influential aide to Nixon, said all of this in http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlic...an interview for Harper’s Magazine. If he can admit that the criminal justice system is inherently skewed against people of color, so can you.

Once this argument backfires, people usually move onto this one:

But…black on black crime!

This “argument” baffles me. Essentially people claim that the worst issue facing the African-American community is violence and crime within their own community, and that until this issue disappears black people do not have the right to be upset about police violence or other forms of systemic racism.

First of all – the term “black on black crime” itself is somewhat problematic. We never use the term “white on white crime”, although according to the U.S. Department of Justice statistics, 84% of white people who are killed every year are killed by other white people. People tend to kill within their own race.

And if you really are concerned about crime within the black community, then take solace in the fact that many of the same leaders who are trying to eradicate racism in the criminal justice system are also trying to combat violence within poor black communities. To quote Jamelle Bouie: “In the last four years, blacks have held community protests against violence in Chicago; New York; Newark, New Jersey; Pittsburgh; Saginaw, Michigan; and Gary, Indiana...You may not have noticed black protests against crime and violence, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t happened. Black Americans—like everyone else—are concerned with what happens in their communities, and at a certain point, pundits who insist otherwise are either lying or willfully ignorant.”

Furthermore, we see justice in the case of civilian crime. When black people kill other black people, most of the time they are convicted for what they have done. Police officers – who swear to protect the communities they serve – are rarely convicted of their own crimes. We see them literally get away with murder. This is an example of oppression because police officers are always held in a position of authority and so wield power that every-day criminals do not possess. Solving the issues of “black on black crime” and police brutality are not mutually exclusive, nor is the former an excuse for the latter. We should be holding cops to higher standards than criminals.

[Insert name of deceased person here] had a criminal record and/or was resisting arrest. Their killing was justified.

I’m sorry…since when did simply possessing a criminal record or resisting arrest become a warrant for immediate execution? “Resisting arrest” is not punishable by death – police are only supposed to use force when their lives are in immediate danger, and even then they are (at least supposedly) trained in de-escalation tactics.

If I killed Brock Turner tomorrow, would you defend the legality of my actions in court, simply because he possesses a criminal record? Martha Stuart has a criminal record. Justin Bieber has a criminal record. If a cop shot one of them dead within two seconds of encountering them (as officers did to 12-year old Tamir Rice), would you defend their actions?

If Dylan Roof, a professed white supremacist who killed 9 people in a church, was able to be arrested and brought to jail in a bullet-proof vest, then Philando Castile should have survived a routine traffic stop.

I don’t agree with their tactics. Their language is so anti-cop!

First of all, you’re going to have to clarify who “they” is. All movements are multi-faceted, and there is never a single consensus as to how to go about fighting injustice. If you are referring to the actual Black Lives Matter Organization, then fear no more: reading http://blacklivesmatter.com/their website will make it clear that the women who founded this organization in no way claim that all police officers are bad, nor do they advocate for inciting violence.

Any anti-cop rhetoric that you do hear from those within the movement is a result of centuries of discrimination reaching a boiling point, and is harmless in comparison to actual systemic oppression. As DeRay Mckesson, a prominent BLM activist said, “the movement is pro-justice, and we believe that police officers should be held accountable in every city in every state across the country. So it is not anti-cop, but it is pro-justice…The reality is that there is no charged rhetoric that matches the violence that the police have inflicted on communities.”

I keep seeing protests become violent. What would MLK say?:

In fact, I can tell you exactly what he would say: “…it is as necessary for me to be as vigorous in condemning the conditions which cause persons to feel that they must engage in riotous activities as it is for me to condemn riots. I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots.” He would say: “A riot is the language of the unheard.” He would say: “And what is it that America has failed to hear? …It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity.”

This is what MLK actually had to say about riots when he was alive.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an advocate of non-violent protest, but he had a full, deep, and radical understanding of the plight of black America and the motivations behind violence. Do not try to manipulate or pacify black people by citing a figure that you have a limited understanding of.

They’re saying everyone is racist, but I’m not racist!

I don’t know a single person in the BLM movement who claims that every white person is aggressively or intentionally racist. If you believe that this is the general belief the Black Lives Matter movement, then you are projecting something personal onto it that is not real.

That being said, you probably are a bit racist. Most people are (I include myself in this). You don’t have to intellectually believe that black people are inferior, or be a member of the KKK, to harbor racist assumptions. Racism is a system of oppression, and anything that upholds that system is a part of the problem. This comes in subtle ways – through how we vote, how we speak, what media we create and consume, and more. And it isn’t totally our fault – unconscious biases are created by the world we are brought up in. However, you can either choose to ignore those unconscious biases or start the hard work of un-brainwashing yourself. If you don't want to be called a racist, I suggest you do the latter.

And then, finally, when all else fails…

Can’t we just agree to disagree?

No, we can’t, actually. So long as your “opinion” would attempt to justify the murder of one of my friends, I cannot respect it. Hell – so long as your opinion would seek to justify the murder of any person; any full, complex, living, breathing human, we cannot simply “agree to disagree”.

We will disagree, and we will disagree, and we will disagree, and we will disagree.

And I will fight.

I will fight.

I will fight.

I will fight.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shout-out to the POC who have made all of these points better and for longer than I have. At the end of the day, a white person can never truly understand what it is like to face racism in America. But we can listen. Here are some articles and videos from a first-hand perspective that explain these issues better than I ever could:

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/h4qg0y/the-nightly-show-with-larry-wilmore-panel---is-black-lives-matter-anti-cop-

http://www.blacklivesmattersyllabus.com/fall2016/

http://www.wbur.org/news/2016/09/20/mass-high-court-black-men-may-have-legitimate-reason-to-flee-police

http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/08/told-white-friend-black-opinion/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SocialWarfare

https://peacelawandjustice.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/newjimcrow-ch-1.pdf

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/12/black_community_is_concerned_with_black_on_black_crime_suggesting_otherwise.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/04/why-dont-black-people-protest-black-on-black-violence/255329/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rakeyia-scott-video-call-the-police_us_57e59706e4b0e80b1ba22256

Reading on being an ally:

https://derricklweston.com/2016/09/20/the-five-things-i-need-from-white-people-right-now/

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/08/showing-up-for-racial-justice-white-feelings-black-lives.html

http://www.justinccohen.com/blog/2016/7/6/advice-for-white-folks-in-the-wake-of-the-police-murder-of-a-black-person