>Arrow George Floyd being a martyr is better for Black Lives Matter precisely because he wasn't a perfect person.

[ILoveVesna]

>During the Civil Rights Movement, NAACP and other pro-black organizations put forth only the most exemplary Black Americans. Rosa Parks was not the first person to refuse to give up her seat to a White person but others before her had family/work issues and the NAACP didn't want anti-Black opponents demonizing their character. Pro-integration movies during the 1960s like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and One Potato, Two Potato had perfect Black characters and disreputable White antagonists. This was to showcase that there was no reason but bigotry to stop perfect Black Americans from fully integrating into society.
<(REDDIT SPACE)
>The thing is though is that Black Americans aren't all perfect. They are normal people who have personality flaws and issues like anybody else. The fact that a person is low-class or has a criminal background should not deprive them of their human or constitutional rights. True equality and the end of discrimination happens when not only the "good minorities" are accepted into society but all minorities are free from discrimination. That is why George Floyd being a protest symbol is more progressive and society-changing than a perfect and magical negro that the police killed unprovoked.

 

[ILoveVesna]

>First of all, the mere fact that you acknowledge that regardless of his past history it was still wrong to murder him. That itself is enough to make Mr. Floyd an acceptable martyr.
<(REDDIT SPACE)
>However, the fact that he was an imperfect man that died needlessly and then became a martyr is part of the movement. His imperfect black life still matters.
<(REDDIT SPACE)
>Black people in America can't get jobs because of their color. They can't get good jobs because of their color. Because school funding depends on a districts tax dollars and black people make much less then whites means that schools in black neighborhoods are much less funded then schools in white areas. Therefore black people are less educated then white's are. Its harder to buy a house because white people don't want blacks in their area and banks are much less likely to give loans to black folks. When black people go to sell their homes the value of their homes can be significantly reduced just because a black person lived there. Whites smoke weed just as much as blacks but if you have a stop and frisk rule or a pull over and search rule and the cops are 10x more likely to pull over a black person vs a white person you end up with a whole community of black people imprisoned for non-violent crimes which ruins families and makes it even harder to move up in life even after you have served your time. We have for profit prisons that make white people rich off the backs of black inmates and the laws are set up that way on purpose. Even the politicians from Nixon and Reagan's day admitted that the war on drugs was just a excuse to control the hippies and the blacks. If you are in prison or have been imprisoned for a federal crime you can't even vote so white, rich politicians continue to be put into office who continue to make laws that prove they don't think black lives matter.
<(REDDIT SPACE)
>BLM isn't just about cops killing black people, its about America not thinking about how black peoples whole lives matter. If all you see is a criminal and its the white people who decide who the criminals are then they are destroying the lives of black people before they ever commit a crime.

 

[Spasoje's Revenge]

 

[ILoveVesna]

>>Second, his criminal record shows a past of drug abuse and violent crime.
>So? He did nothing deserving execution without trial.
>>While a tragedy that any life is loss, George Floyd didn't live the life of a saint.
>So? This is not necessarily information that his murderer had when choosing to murder him. And even so, is it yours, or anyone else's, judgement to lessen the value of someone's life and assume they will never be rehabilitated?
>>My view is that he shouldn't have become a martyr for BLM.
>He was murdered by someone wielding the authority of the state. Someone who works in an organization that investigated itself and found no wrong doing. Someone that would have gotten away with criminal murder had it not been recorded on camera.
>This is exactly what BLM is about. About the hundreds if not thousands of dead African Americans that have been murdered by the police who have gotten away with it because the lies they tell are believed by the judicial system over the witnesses of other members in the community.
>There couldn't be a more symbolic event for the BLM movement. A cop slowly, with zero regard for the life of another human being, murders a man in broad daylight. And then the cops say it was all normal and within regular operating procedures and that the man died due to a medical incident, not being choked to death as the coroners later determined.
<[deleted] 2y ago Edited 2y ago
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