User:Leverage/Black Lives Matter
“I be woke as a motherfucker.”
– White BLM protester
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an organized (occasionally disorganized) movement advocating for non-violent (occasionally violent) civil disobedience in protest against incidents of police brutality against Afro-American people.
The movement was founded in 2013 after Suspicious Black Death no.1768999 (Trayvon Martin) and gained a powerful slogan, "Hands Up Don't Shoot" after Suspicious Black Death no. 1769741 (Michael Brown).
However, it really took off in 2020, when a COVID-weary population spilled out on to the streets - not after Suspicious Black Death no.1787485 (Atatiana Jefferson) or Suspicious Black Death no.1787488 (Breonna Taylor), but rather Suspicious Black Death no.1787490.
Suspicious black death no.1787490[edit | edit source]
“Hey listen, he had a fake $20-dollar bill and then he was resisting arrest, that could have happened to any white person just the same.”
– Conservative commenter
“Even, like, Charlotte from Sex and the City?”
– Liberal commenter
Suspicious Black Death no.1787490 was that of George Floyd, who was detained by police on suspicion of using a counterfeit $20 bill. He complained that he was having breathing difficulties and did not want to remain in the police car. Officer Derek Chauvin struggled with him in the car, pulled him out of the car, let him fall to the floor, and then inexplicably knelt on his neck for 8 minutes 46 seconds.
Unfortunately for Chauvin, witnesses, some of whom could not form a sentence without saying the word "bro", filmed the scene, and several even pointed out that Floyd might perhaps be taken to the hospital to address his crushed trachea. Chauvin, along with three fellow officers, thought it more expedient to wait until Floyd had nearly suffocated and then haul him to the police station where there were no cameras.
The publication of the video was explosive, coming as it did in the midst of COVID-influenced discontent: widespread financial turmoil, a kind of latent but simmering end-of-days vibe, and a host of depressing attempts to keep television shows going, including an appalling use of CGI in the series finale of The Blacklist. (See right.)
Many protests were staged around the country with several descending into fracas, melées, scuffles, brouhahas, tussles and skirmishes. Protesters came to an immediate consensus per the appropriate response after a thoughtful discussion and exchange of views: burn down the nearest Target and loot the nearest Nike shoe store.
A number of celebrities were moved to contribute to BLM as a result of the protests, with Kanye West offering to put up $1 million to pay protesters' bail money. Unfortunately, West ended up paying the bail of Derek Chauvin, who is now at large and considered dangerous when stooping.
Black lives mattering[edit | edit source]
“#AllLivesMatter”
– Conservative commenter
“#WhiteLivesMatter”
– Very Conservative commenter
“Black Lives Matter doesn't imply that white lives don't matter. It speaks of the fact that black people feel like they get killed in huge numbers every year and nothing gets done about it. This... this isn't snappy enough for a hashtag, is it?”
– Liberal commenter
The popularization of BLM split the U.S. into two groups of people: those who thought black lives should have more value applied to them, and those who thought current levels were probably about right.
The modern age of readily available data meant that Liberals could point out that black people make up 23% of people dying in custody, but only 13% of the population. Conservatives could then counter and say while black people made up 23% of people dying in custody, they made up 27% of arrests, so the murder per capita rate might be high, but the murder per arrest rate was actually better than that of the average American.
What do you mean you didn't expect to see factual data in an Uncyclopedia article?
Unfortunately, the inevitable next stage in the debate - whether a population group's arrest rate is likely to correlate perfectly with how many crimes that group commits - was too complex and debatable for social media.
- Liberals would have to point out that blacks were much more likely to be arrested for drug possession, despite the fact that surveys show drug use is consistent across races.
- Conservatives would have to point to extremely high numbers of blacks arrested for violent crimes, including murder, as evidence that the black community has to face up to its disproportionate crime rates.
- Liberals would then suggest that such crimes were likely to be endemic in any economically deprived areas, and white Americans coming from generations of poverty would be likely to have similar rates of offense.
- Conservatives would then shrug and say there was a lack of data backing that theory and that they could only comment on what they could see, and that the number of black-on-black murders dwarfed the number of black people dying in custody.
It was too much. So users on both sides settled on calling each other fucking idiots.
Defunding the police[edit | edit source]
“Fuck the police! Fuck 'em! All they do is bust poor folks' balls! Your house gets robbed, your cousin gets killed, your sister gets raped, where they at?”
– Liberal commenter
“But, like, who are you going to call if your sister actually gets raped?”
– Conservative commenter
One major BLM proposal was to reallocate funds from policing to often-neglected areas like education, public health, housing, and youth services. It was dubbed "defunding the police". This term, which suggested the police budget would be roughly $0, was readily seized upon by Fox News and other conservative news sources, who wilfully extended this misconception of "defunding" for the purpose of getting their viewers all riled up. Which is how they like it.
The lack of understanding among Fox News presenters and viewers was unfortunately shared by many BLM protesters, who also took the slogan literally. This was most clearly evident in a gentrified district of Seattle, where the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), later the Capitol Hill Organized (or Occupied) Protest (CHOP), was formed. (A further attempt to rename the group, as Capitol Hill Independent New Kingdom, was exposed as the work of racist troublemakers.)
The independent state held steady for two weeks and was almost officially recognized by Papua New Guinea and Kiribati but locals lost affection for the idea when they noticed that the presence of police cars had not only been replaced by urban vegetable gardens - as promised - but also renegade gun-toting watchmen.
Focus on inanimate objects[edit | edit source]
After more than a week of people-based protests, June 2 saw a "blackout" on social media, which meant that protesters boycotted all social media indefinitely as a sign of their intent to reject social norms of super-rich Silicone Valley CEO's profiting from racism and hate-speech and avoiding taxes as much as humanly possible.
Only joking: they posted a big black square as their profile pic for a day.
Some users, overwhelmed by the task of googling a picture of a black square, downloading and uploading it, inadvertently uploaded screengrabs of the Game of Thrones episode "The Long Night". (See below left)
For a small minority of white Americans, the reminder of the final season of Game of Thrones was a useful way to empathize with black people's sense of a social contract being betrayed.
These fine Americans, of Danish or perhaps Dutch stock, contemplate the juxtaposition of a Southern general and the word racist for the first time.
Columbus, possibly pointing to a nine-year-old Caribbean child who would make a useful sex slave.
Elsewhere, activists' wrath was directed at statues, especially those of men born hundreds of years ago. These men, born into a slave-owning society, and brought up on the concepts of social Darwinism, racial hierarchy and the Curse of Ham, somehow didn't have the strength of character to condemn everyone around them and have 21st century-compatible beliefs.
Historians estimate that 82% of the USA's population in 1776 would likely have rated blackface as "amusing" or "gosh-darned amusing".
Many young Americans realized they had been taught a rather sanitized version of their history, which consisted of chanting "U-S-A!" while watching a grinning, tap-dancing George Washington declaring all men were created equal. They were shocked to learn that the actual draft of the constitution was written using a black slave's back instead of a desk, and Cherokee blood mixed with disenfranchised women's tears instead of ink.
Armed by this new historical knowledge that their country wasn't the distillation of Atticus Finch, activists wrote "genocide" on statues of Columbus, "racist" on statues of Confederate generals and: "This is not a symbol of freedom or a genuine welcome message to immigrants, but rather a schadenfreude-fueled gift from the French who would have sent this to any country which beat the British in a war" on the Statue of Liberty.
Keep in mind the Statue of Liberty is very large.
BLM in the UK[edit | edit source]
Despite the fact that British police kill slightly fewer black people than their American counterparts - a total of 13 in 10 years (yes, you read that right), BLM spread across the Atlantic like the second most contagious phenomenon of 2020.
A number of white, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and in some cases, black protesters took to the streets in the UK.
In Bristol, a statue of former Member of Parliament and slave trader Edward Colston was thrown into the harbour, and while protesters cheered the rebellious act, it was later revealed that the 800-pound statue tragically killed a local black family who were having their first scuba diving lesson.
A British splinter movement of BLM was also formed: Black Clives Matter. This organisation was created by citizens who wanted to draw attention to the fact that while African American men's unconventional names, like Barkevious, BenJarvus or D'Rickashaw, were often cited as evidence of their lack of class or intelligence, black British men were also subject to racism, despite being called ridiculously sensible things like Graham, Nigel and Clive.
Public apologies[edit | edit source]
Many organizations and public figures made apologies for past actions in the wake of the protests, almost as if the sight of thousands of people chanting slogans and smashing things up had magically made them change their minds about things that had seemed fine to them a week ago.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced an about-face that stunned some of the NFL's more patriotic fanbase: "I admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier, and I encourage teams to sign up Colin Kaepernick, you know, that decent quarterback they have all unanimously ignored for three years.
"This has nothing to do with me coldly calculating that the backlash against this apology would be less harmful to my career than not apologizing.
"I simply had an epiphany this week which convinced me I should change my current position by roughly 180 degrees."
Coincidentally, this apology came four days after that of Drew Brees, who had raised objections to players protesting during the anthem. He was immediately challenged by teammates, some of whom had threatened to stop talking to him, or worse, to drop his passes or allow him to be sacked. After a few short minutes of engaging with other people's views and embarking on a journey of self-learning, Drees announced he no longer had his long-held beliefs.
Quaker Oats announced its Aunt Jemima pancake mix would be rebranded, acknowledging that protests against the image, some of which dated back to 1892, were probably correct and man those riots look scary.
In response, many modern-day Quakers complained that Quaker Oats reinforced centuries-old stereotypes of them, including:
- they are happy to toil harvesting cereals
- they live bland, flavor-free lives, have wispy
- they have oat-like hair underneath gay hats
- they only take one minute to do their business
Both Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel found themselves embroiled in blackface scandals, after well-meaning citizens with no malice in their hearts happened to stumble upon 20-year-old footage of them, and posted screengrabs of them in blackface on social media.
Fallon underlined his status as an alpha male by both apologizing for his actions and thanking the uploaders for "checking his privilege". Kimmel offered a more grudging apology, saying: "I apologize to those people of color who were genuinely hurt or offended by my actions when they originally watched it live in 2000, and didn't laugh throughout the skit".
Tragically, the timing of the twin incidents assured that your parents will never be able to tell Fallon and Kimmel apart.
Elsewhere, Tina Fey asked NBC to pull several episodes of 30 Rock in which characters wore blackface. "I thought it was funny to make racist jokes in my autobiography, and 30 Rock, and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but now I have written an eloquent apology explaining why it never was funny, even though I laughed out loud while writing it."
Finally, an episode of Golden Girls in which two characters appear wearing mud-packs when a black family come to visit was removed by Hulu. The 1989 episode had been watched literally dozens of times, and was especially popular among the 80-death age group. A member of George Floyd's family was so moved by the decision, she told reporters: "Er, we weren't campaigning about any of this."
Ironically, even celebrities who were fully behind Floyd's cause were also obliged to apologize. The announcement of an all-star charity single was initially met with enthusiasm, but performers were forced into a grovelling apology when it was revealed that the song they had selected was the late Bill Withers's Lean On Me.
