Some thoughts on the George Floyd protest/riots

The current wave of protests and riots are race riots, and police riots. Race riots, because, well, as American history suggests, riots due to the issue of racial oppression (mostly blacks, but hispanics too) happens from time to time. I personally associate with the Rodney King one the best, because that was wild. Look at us now though.

Police riots, however, is the kind of riot the police is mostly doing the instigating. Over this past weekend I have seen this term being thrown around, and people don’t quite realize it is one term, “police riot” and not that the riots involve the police. Well they typically all do in the modern era.

The current protests are occurring across the country, mostly in major cities. This is new and unique because it’s the first one driven mostly by SNS. It’s also organized on SNS. A lot of people are literally on the ground and broadcasting, including the news outlets themselves.

But I think that is also a gap. Older people tend to get their news from TV so it is going to present to them a different view of the situation. One, for example, that includes a lot of Donald Trump theatrics. For most of us, he’s pretty much reduced to a twitter troll in terms of his contribution to the situation. But much like 2016, the news always jump on his coverage, amplifying that stuff, making it worse.

It’s easy to understand why saying all lives matter is, at best, an insensitive statement. But it really feeds well into the underlying condition needed to behave in a racist manner. It would explain why some feel compelled to call out those who do say all lives matter as racist. And in turn, those who do to discredit those who say black lives matter. It is a stupid taking-two-to-tango mechanism.

To further explain, in order to behave in a racist way, you first have to believe you aren’t a racist. And a statement that calls to value all lives qualifies for that condition. Of course, in the BLM context, it is a racist thing because it’s anti-black when you’re not in support of that message. It minimizes the cause and trivializes their systemic suffering. It is a stupid no-brainer, anyway. Or maybe because it is a no-brainer, it is insulting to be saying it to BLM folks. Of course all lives matter. If it was some deeply insightful thing, it probably will be something everyone else repeats, not just apparently right wingers and trolls.

At the same time, all lives matter is a valid issue some whites struggle with. Especially those nice kind of white people who recognize that black lives do matter. You probably can only find them in the church. You probably also have to kindly tell them that, well, antifa probably doesn’t exist as a terrorist group, as it were.

There is this Christian preacher and widely-read author named John Piper. He wrote a pretty decent study book I did back when I was in high school, and while he was also kind of whack it is interesting to see his point of view on this, being based in Minneapolis.

His 2016 discussion on BLM here.

His recent preaching here.

Naive/quaint old preacher he may be, but it is the baby step anyone can accomplish.

Here is a youtuber talking about the qualifying conditions to propel racism, in the context of Ip Man 4… poignant in this day and age.