i see the aussie teams are taking the knee after games, what are peoples opinions and should we follow suit?

Its just fuelling racism and totally the wrong thing to do
i dont think this would happen in football or rugby if fans were in the ground
Career criminal or not non of us condone what happened to the guy in the USA at the hands of the police but its time to let this go and stop all the media coverage.

Stop all the media coverage of anti-racism protests or stop all the media coverage of racism?

I think bonaire meant stop all the biased coverage, BLM is important, so too are those that feel it has been hijacked to try and cause violence and unrest, as mich as I hate the right wing viewpoint, they have as much right to protest as BLM, but they get a much more negative narrative, especially from the BBC.

Well I’m not kneeling, I wouldn’t get up again.

Probably both, until such time that everyone can sit down and discuss all the issues in an open and adult way.

Black lives matter, as a statement and a cause, as opposed to Black Lives Matter as an organised movement, being one of the main ones. Every person on the planet should be able to support the statement, but unfortunately The Movement has more, far reaching aims.

Keep politics out of it. I can see the Burnley thing getting out of hand

I doubt I would get down with my knees

The biased coverage is getting out of hand.
The fact that flying a White lives matter banner near to Burnleys stadium yesterday is deemed to be racist and now subject to a police investigation sums it up.
As far as sport is concerned i believe players would not have been drawn into this had the public been able to attend matches.
It was all too easy for players.managers,referees and staff in attendance at recent matches to kneel in an empty stadium without fan reaction.
Also lets get players names back on their shirts and draw a line under this now before it escalates any further.

Again, I agree. Why are the Police investigating, are they going to investigate the multiple churches I walk or cycle past that have quotes from the Bible on boards outside, or Government anti-smoking messages, or in fact, anything that expresses opinion?

I agree, I'm struggling to see what 'crime' is being investigated.

It seems the guy who organised it is a pretty vile individual, so the Police possibly knew that already... they have said they are not taking any action but his g/f or fiancee or whatever has been sacked for some comments she has posted on Facebook. The banner in itself was not a crime, it seems the intention was to cause offense as opposed to simply providing a point of view, still doesn't warrant the media coverage it recieved, as bonaire said, it is what these things (from all sides) lead to that is the main concern, people were more bothered about the Churchill statue getting defaced and having to be boarded up than they were the protest itself. I dare say had The Mayor London been Boris and said he was "protecting a symbol of national pride" there wouldn't't have been half as much 'noise'. And this is the problem, it isn't the snowflake that starts the avalanche, it's the village at the bottom of the mountain where people are at risk.

The only way to end racism is for colour to be removed altogether particularly in the way media report.
Why did it have to be reported as white cop kills Blackman? Would it have been reported as black cop kills white man? Or just just reported as police brutality cops kills man?
The BLM movement to me now seems more of a mob mentality out to stir up racial tension and their cause and voice is getting lost in all the over hyping etc. . The BLM movement do not seem to speak out so much about black on black deaths which is also a big problem & is just as important in terms black lives mattering.
Yes there is racism in the world along with all kinds of discrimination and it’s very hard to rid the world completely of such things. All that the recent protests with violence and trying to wipe out history is doing is setting us back decades.
All lives matter no matter your what colour that life is.
Sadly in today’s world you can’t have open and honest debate for fear of upsetting some people/groups etc or being classified as, racist, homophobic, transphobic etc if you are not the right colour or representation etc. The so called celebrity outrage too is nauseating as half of them haven’t got a clue or live in the real world but see it as a way to garner media attention.
Question is, is the world becoming better or worse with it all?

No doubt someone will criticise this post because they feel offended and if that’s the case it’s just proves the point.

Bang on chris, great post. And the answer to your question, probably worst, undoing all the great progress of the last 80 years

Excellent post.

There's a very good documentary on Iplayer right now called "I am not your negro". Recommend it, think it won quite a lot of awards.

:2z0rz14z
Indeed, and it is the majority view.

I posted this on my Fb yesterday , be interested to know what others think:

The systemic attempts to destruct history need to stop, the world was a very different place 20 years ago, let alone 100,200,500 years ago. If we continue down the route of selectively applying the culture of today on the actions of yesterday it shows that we are not really learning from our mistakes.

Zacariah Pearson tried to break the blockade during the American Civil War to import cotton, not because the cotton was farmed by slaves, but because the City of Hull was falling further in to decline, slavery was a fact of life at the time. That doesn't mean he was a racist. Yet some would have the park renamed and his plaque removed.

Even the Star Spangled Banner was penned by a slave owner (and hypocrite):

Wiki entry start He freed some of his slaves in the 1830s, paying one ex-slave as his farm foreman. He publicly criticized slavery and gave free legal representation to some slaves seeking freedom, but he also represented owners of runaway slaves.
end Wiki entry :

The third verse makes comments to those 'Colonial Marines' (black men fighting for the British in return for their freedom) and how the last ship they would sail would be to a watery grave.

Will Americans stop singing it when they, hypocritically, take a knee?

If they are so het up by oppression and inequality, will Cheerleaders be gone from NFL games, or is moral indignation reserved for the actions of white men against black men. Will rap music be banned (basically glorification of drugs, gangs, guns and violence), I very much doubt it.

Can you see the Aussies kneeling when Advance Australia fair is played ("we are young and free", hmmm, tell that to the Aboriginals that have inhabited Australia for 60,000 years and are still persecuted and prosecuted and were subjugated with alcohol and gambling)

People talk of banning "Swing low, sweet chariot", what next, ban "Land of Hope & Glory", "Rule Britannia", "Jerusalem", all are Nationalistic and Imperialistic. Don't even start on "God Save the Queen"

Basically, where does it stop?

Our history isn't always something we should be proud of, but nor should we selectively decide which bits to keep and which to discard because it is socially awkward to even speak of it...

Racism is awful, as is all oppression, but the situation is improving each decade, people have shown their feelings with protests, an incident of racial or oppressive nature triggers these kind of protests on a roughly 10 year cycle, and it always will, there will always be the oppressor and the oppressed, it is nature, and not just human nature.

Conflating racism, subjugation,opression, inequality and intolerance into one cause under a three word banner ,as is the trend, lessens the importance of each in their own right.

There were elements of the post I’m excerpting from that I agree with, but I like to argue, so...



That certainly exists, but c’mon. A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul and I’m sure plenty of others who, if we had any users who had taken on any popular culture references since the mid-90s, those users could tell us about.



It is true (well, until those benevolent AIs that I mentioned a while back come along). But just because it is true, it doesn’t make it right. And if oppression is inevitable, isn’t resistance to it not only also inevitable but more legitimate?



It’s an interesting point, but if a problem is seen as being systemic then it possibly begs a holistic approach to solve. There’s lot of stuff over here in liberalsnowflakeland about how these things intersect - if you’re black [uand[/u a woman, for example.

But, back on topic, I suspect now (or soon) the pubs and cinemas will be open that the protests will fall away like they always do, the BLM point has been made, any action or inaction that comes out of it will be far outweighed by the damage those on both sides have done by hijacking a legitimate cause for more inflammatory actions. (we should probably take this to The Sin Bin M.R, way off the original intend3d topic now I suspect)

it should not be ,black lives matter or white lives matter,it should be ALL LIVES MATTER>

The last is the clear implication of the first.

There was a guy talking about this yesterday on the BBC. I acknowledge limitations in a comparison between a campaign slogan and the names of charitable organisations; however, not many see Save the Children or Help the Aged as implying that other age groups are unimportant.

"prejudice is wrong"
"inequality and discrimination is wrong"

as you say, every individual matters, every group matters (even if we disagree with what they stand for), an opinion being abhorrent doesn't make it invalid.
It is rarely the message that is at fault on it's own, it's usually how that message is conveyed.

Some very good points being made by all.
I tend to like to see facts that back up the words being spoken.

Given that the latest 'troubles' were a reaction to the murder of George Floyd by a Police Officer, and the claims of Black people being disproportionately killed around the world by the Police, then it seems reasonable that there would be some actual evidence out there to support it.

There isn't, and unfortunately for those who seek to promote the argument, then what statistics there are, tend to destroy the argument.

A couple of quick ones, found with very little effort.

A Police Officer in the USA is 18 times more likely to be shot and killed by a Black person, than an unarmed Black person is, to be shot and killed by Police.

In the UK it is claimed that Black people are disproportionately (3 times) more likely to die in custody than a White person.

The population of the UK is approx. 3% Black, yet the Criminal Justice statistics show that 10% of those convicted of crime are Black.

In London, in 48% of murders, the suspects are Black. For the rest of the UK, in 13% of the murders the suspects are Black.

This would tend to suggest that Black are disproportionately more likely to enter into custody.

Now, I'm sure that there are many socio-economic factors that affect those figures, in exactly the same way as there are other factors involved when someone dies in Police custody.
If those who seek to vilify the Police use facts, then, surely fire, should be used to fight fire.

I apologise in advance, to anyone I may have offended by using facts.

I absolutely agree with the message that racism is bad. I just don't see that BLM is the answer.

As you rightly say, as soon as you throw facts into the argument, it simply dispels the myth that black people are on the whole, unfairly targeted.

In the US for example, on the latest figures I can find (FBI website), the black population of the US accounts for 13% of the total population, yet commits 58% of the homicide. If you figure in that the black population is almost a 50/50 split between male and female, and that males are far more likely to commit violent crime, that means that 6.5% of the US population commit 58% of the murder. Thats not a racial issue, its a cultural issue!

In the US 50% of black males don't complete high school - cultural issue and a lack of quality schools

In the US 70% of black households are single parent. As a kicker, you are 13 x (Thirteen) more likely to serve time in prison if you come from a single parent household. That's a cultural issue which in fairness was brought around by an old democrat policy that made it financially beneficial to live in a single parent household.

As you alluded to, there are socioeconomic issues that the black community both in the US and the UK have that need to be dealt with, and I have no doubts at all that there are people who have to deal with racism on a daily basis. What I cannot concede however, is that the racism is either systemic or institutional. What institution is actively trying to stop black people from reaching their potential? Considering that you are more than 3 x as likely to die by the hands of the police as an unarmed white man than as an unarmed black man, it cant be the police. There will be racist officers, but to label the whole institution as racist is just lunacy. Its like calling all men rapists or all women child killers.

Instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water, we need to look at everything on an individual basis. The officer who killed George Floyd is rightfully going to answer for his crime, but he is certainly not indicative of a systemic issue. Where was the outcry about the black private security officers who were killed during the subsequent rioting? It seem's that black lives only matter when you can throw some kind of oppression into the mix, which is also bull!

Absolutely.