- All people are being killed unjustly. Black people were tired of it and are using their voices to bring light to the matter- which is why BLM was formed. 3 women were tired of hearing about unarmed black people being shot by police & the police weren't held accountable. Any group of people could've voiced their opinions on police brutality but no group of people were ever as loud as BLM.
This is the difference that Mila is pointing out. BLM was formed because we only heard about the black people that are killed in the media. This is a result of selective media coverage. Anyone and everyone who's worked in media is aware of this phenomenon and why it is a problem, that is the knowledge that Mila is sharing. This part is not her opinion, anyone who's ever worked behind the scenes, myself included, knows this happens on a dangerous level.
Nobody got mad about white people dying because nobody covered the white people dying. Nobody finds out about it. People with the power to make that happen decided it wouldn't sell enough papers, or generate enough clicks, or let's hope not something worse(political purposes.) You have to search so hard to even find records of them and then only guess based on last names. There's no pictures. It's not like the editors and news directors are all black, so why are only the black stories covered or considered to have legs? We don't know, but what we do know is it's what's dividing us on these issues.
The names of the police officers, killed in NYC in 2014 by a lone nut in retaliation to Eric Garner and Michael Brown, are not household names.
Many Americans forgot that even happened until the killings in Dallas and Baton Rouge. People don't know the names of the cops killed in Dallas and Baton Rouge of the top of their head and that was this month. Because they are referred mainly by their cities in the media. Because it doesn't receive the same level of media coverage in quite the same manor. And because at this point people are even afraid to offend anyone by bringing them up nearly as much on other platforms.
We don't know why the black killings are being covered the most, but that's why BLM was the first/only group to get mad about it.
And now, when anyone gets mad about anything else, they aren't allowed to, because they're deemed insensitive to BLM. This is a real problem. I'm not discounting the experience of black people, all I am asking is why are these the experiences dominating headlines? It's something happening out of our control.
Because it hurts us all when that happens.
We forget the names of Rafael Ramos, and Wenjian Liu, because they aren't blasted in our face everyday. And at this point what can anyone even do about it? If we start a group to remind people of every dead cop killed unjustly by nutjobs retaliating, how will that go over?? I feel like you can't. It becomes a competition when it shouldn't be. There's an environment now where no one else can get mad about related problems because they're told they're racist, or on the side of the bad guys, even if you're genuinely worried about everybody.
It's not nitpicky to point out Assata Shakur and the BLA. Any other inspirational black person could have been chosen to be named for inspiration in the movement and the one that gets picked, the one that gets quoted, her name is synonymous with cop killing. Why can't that be called out as unnecessary? Mila knows her off the top of her head because Mila knows Communism. I know her off the top of my head because I know NYC history, and race relations there during the time period. I didn't need to google her to prove a point. I'm sure Mila didn't either.
I know it seems like I'm constantly licking her ass lately, but trust me I'm not an ass licker. Anyone who's worked in media has stories up and running from likely 10 different sources at the same time on a single given issue. Anyone with integrity knows how important that is to do. And the more often you do that, the more you can see the disparity in coverage. And when that happens, when the patterns are right in front of you, you want to know the reasons. You want to tell everyone, "but look at this" and it's not to pick a fight, it's to shed light on it, because you look around and no one else is and you don't know why. It's enough to drive you crazy.
I can't speak for anyone but myself. But I know my own heart, and these conversations are hard but necessary and just know anything I say on this comes from a place of genuine concern for everybody.
