Running racism in America thread

I didn't say you attacked me.

Your question was, "I just want to understand what can people do to get your attention and effect change?"

How am I supposed to read that?

I had no clue why you think anyone needs to get my attention. Which is why I said you don't know me.

I don't doubt you're sincere, but when I read your post I saw a bunch of mealy generalizations.

A celebrity kneeling on the sidelines was offensive? To who? Donald Trump and some rednecks?

Don't tell me about "marginalized communities." Tell me specifically what people are having their civil rights violated or are being wronged, and how, and I think there is way more ability for people to act constructively in terms of where America still isn't living up to its ideals.

We have a problem with way too many black men ending up dead at the hands of cops, year after a year. That is where the focus should be. Vote. Christ, if even half the people who were in the streets last night demanded different leaders than the ones we keep getting to choose from, and just showed up to vote, they could have at least some effect.

Demand accountability from your elected leaders. Stand up for your constitutional protections, insist on limits on the police. If that doesn't work, civil disobedience.

I brought up MLK Jr. in my other post. When he marched from Selma to Montgomery, he wasn't making mealy proclamations about "change" or asking for "answers" without clearly identifying injustices. He was protesting discriminatory laws that were designed to disenfranchise millions of black people. He was fighting for the right to vote.

Sit-in protests weren't protesting everything and nothing the way a lot of protests do now. They were fighting Jim Crow laws that made blacks second-class citizens in restaurants. They were fighting segregation, and they took the protest right to the place they faced segregation, to make people take notice

When Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus, she was pretty damned specific about how she was being wronged and what she wanted.

Putting aside the actual motivations of a bunch of idiots who found an excuse last night to riot and loot and steal and cause destruction, there is nothing about that kind of behavior that is going to address a problem we have with police brutality in US cities. It's not only misguided at best, but it adds another problem that hurts other people on top of it.