You should try speaking to some inner city black people. I know most Trump supporters don’t integrate much as they’re isolated in rural areas from anyone different than themselves, but you can learn a lot by understanding the various cultures in this country.
I’ll do my best to help you understand why there’s an issue with stating “All lives matter” at a time like this. It will require knowledge of history, sociology, and some vicarious understanding, so its far more complex than seeing something like Black lives matter and thinking uh, yeah, duh, all lives matter.
Blacks in this nation have been the most disenfranchised population in the wealthiest nation known to man. Literally they are some of the poorest people in the world living amongst the rich. Some folks who lived in Cabrini Green in Chicago, would see white folks driving by in Mercedez Benz’s, while living with government support due to the poverty they are in. It should be easy to understand that growing up as a poor black person to see rich white people all around you in a major city would leave you feel pretty small and considering the history of how black people have been treated in the United States, pretty sure it has something to do with your skin color. We can spend hours on segregation, having to go to the back of the bus, using different toilets because white people told you, the same families of white people who enslaved your ancestors and told them they were only 3/5’s of a vote. Some might think that black people would think white people only seen them as 3/5’s of a person.
While many things have been done to correct the past wrongs, a lot of these past institutional wrongs existed less than a lifetime a go. That means their families know first hand how to be treated like less of a person compared to a white person. That is, if they have families at all. Being impoverished its pretty hard to support a family, so its not a surprise that many families in the black community don’t really exist, or consist of a mom only. I’m sure you can understand that. Aside from that, growing up in a poor neighborhood leaves you with a poor education in this country. Poorly funded. So they see white people living in nicer neighborhoods, getting nicer educations, getting better opportunities, while being born in a system and culture that wholly mistreated and denigrated them, to say the least. I provide no justice for the atrocity they have endured.
Those atrocities and that poverty leads to a broken culture within, one without an education, the know how, the opportunity, and a culture of success, they have been damned with a culture of failure, and as such, failure leads to crime and rebellion of culture. You wonder why they don’t want to talk or dress like you? They speak uneducated perhaps? Don’t use proper English? Have their jeans hanging down their legs? I wonder why. There’s a feeling of hopeless I don’t give a fuck attitude after being disenfranchised that way.
Of course, many many black people can make it out and thrive, and have a good life and do great things, but there’s obviously a lot that aren’t going to be capable of doing that against the daunting odds. There’s a lot that aren’t going to want to do that, in this sick hateful world they’ve experienced. You can say all you want about having black friends, but racism just doesn’t disappear in a culture like this under a lifetime. I know plenty of people who won’t hire simply because of the color of their skin. Proving that however, is hard, because discrimination like that is very hard to prove without solid facts. But nonetheless, there’s a lot still going on for them, and when they see black people getting killed unjustly, in another unjust system, it shouldn’t be too hard to see why people would get upset for saying all lives matter while they’re feeling like their lives really don’t matter to a culture full of well off white people who aren’t suspected as a possible criminal because of their skin color. Whether it happens or not, they certainly feel and think that it happens, and I certainly know it does happen to them as well. But that is their feeling, that white people or everyone else mattering is plain as day. They don’t see that white people or everyone else sees their lives as mattering, as plain as day. I hope that gives you some understanding of the anger you might see when people claim all lives matter at a time like this. There’s good reason why they feel people don’t think their lives matter and its backed by years of being treated like their lives don’t matter.
Rumination Factory 