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It was within days of the murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, at the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement and national outrage sparked by the killing, that they started appearing. Facebook posts on my feed of friends and friends of friends joining the All Lives Matter bandwagon.

It was part dj vu and not at all surprising. This counter movement had happened before, when Black Lives Matter first began and large portions of the white American populace took it as a direct disregard for their lives.

Only this time, the posters on my feed were not white. They were South Asian, many of them Bangladeshis, like me, either part of the diaspora in the United States or living in Bangladesh. Their extreme grievance had all the outrage and indignation of the original coiners of All lives matter. How dare their lives be left out! Some of the posts sounded as though they were personally harmed by the mere utterance and existence of Black Lives Matter. They scolded and they issued clarifications of why Black Lives Matter struck such a nerve.

A Muslim lives matter post appeared. And another, in its indignant inclusivity, added Police lives matter. In the real world, police across America were teargassing lawful protestors, beating them with batons, and firing rubber bullets and pepper-spray pellets at Americans decrying systemic racism and demanding justice.

Heres a refresher: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi created Black Lives Matter in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martins murderer, George Zimmerman. Martin was a 17-year-old Black man and Zimmerman, a 28-year-old man of mixed race. Zimmerman shot and killed Martin in 2012, claimed self-defense, and was acquitted. The following year, Michael Brown was murdered by police in Ferguson, Missouri. Eric Garner died the same year in New York, unable to breathe in a police chokehold, for selling loose cigarettes outside a convenience store.

Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Breanna Taylor, Tony McDade Black men and women dead at the hands of racist cops, not one of whom were charged with murder. Black Lives Matter is a specific and direct response to this. In the early days of the movement, posts and memes went around telling BLM and its supporters to get over themselves. Projection, anyone?

My fellow South Asians and Bangladeshis who were and are so hair-trigger prompted to lash out against Black Lives Matter neglect a crucial aspect of what theyre latching onto as a consequence, however inadvertently or unintentionally: White supremacy. No, this doesnt mean theyre chanting White Power and hurling racial slurs. Neither does it mean that just because they have Black friends and co-workers whom they love and respect that they cant be racist.

White supremacy is a multilayered, multifaceted system, not limited to the Ku Klux Klan or fringe outfits like the Boogaloo Boys. In its most insidious forms, it exists silently and comfortably in mainstream American life at schools, at workplaces, in finance, in real estate, in police departments, the military and, closer home, in my community, with those South Asians and Bangladeshis who have opted for white-adjacency.

Anti-black racism seems to come easy for too many in my community, easier than accepting Black Lives Matter. The roots of this are complex, ingrained in our attitudes toward skin color which favours fair over dark. Deplorable ads for a skin-lightening product named Fair and Lovely play across channels throughout the subcontinent. The ones that I saw in Bangladesh featured prominent Bollywood actors whose skin color is shown in time-lapse going from an undesirable dark to a cleansed and palatable fair after they used Fair and Lovely as directed over a period of time.

South Asians and Bangladeshis talk of bad neighborhoods in Chicago and New York and Detroit and Los Angeles with the same underlying suggestion as the white people from whom theyve inherited the racist whistle: those neighborhoods are predominantly, if not entirely, Black.

South Asians and Bangladeshis have largely fared better in America. Education, upward mobility, wealth. They assimilated, which meant what it has always meant: blending and disappearing as model minorities within white society, not sticking out, not calling attention to themselves, being grateful for a shot at the American Dream, being okay and silent in a system rife with inequality and oppression because it doesnt affect them.

The post-Black Lives Matter backlash saw Blue Lives Matters. Suddenly, there not only needed to be a movement calling for cop killers to be brought to justice but it had to use, of all the other choices of words and phrases, the one that hit home the hardest.

In June, a Dallas bar-owner, one of several suing the Texas governor over re-imposed restrictions because of Covid-19 spikes, organised a Bar Lives Matter concert and protest. On July 5, a news report out of Branson, Missouri showed Black Lives Matters protestors facing off with counter-protestors of the predominantly white town waving Confederate flags, wearing MAGA hats and Trump 2020 t-shirts. One man wore a black t-shirt that said White Lives Matter, and at least one other man had no problem with the Swastikas tattooed on his neck being shown, in close-up, on national TV.

Am I suggesting that my fellow South Asians and Bangladeshis are the same as those racists? No, not literally.

But what do I make of them using the tactics of White supremacy without a thought, and defending their use of it? What do I make of them seeing the validity of a racist backlash over the legitimacy of a movement for lives that have repeatedly not mattered?

If were going to be allies, the only permission we have is to say Black Lives Matter. If were not going to be allies, fine. What we cannot do is to appropriate, to disregard specifics and be ignorant of oppression were enabling and supporting.

View original post here:
South Asians chanting All lives matter are feeding the rise of White supremacy - Scroll.in

Our July 2020 pick for the PBS NewsHour-New York Times book club is Claudia Rankines Citizen. Become a member of the Now Read This book club by joining our Facebook group, or by signing up to our newsletter. Learn more about the book club here.

The first lines of Claudia Rankines essay, In Memory of Trayvon Martin, start with an invocation of the history of mass incarceration of African Americans.

My brothers are notorious. They have not been to prison. They have been imprisoned, Rankine wrote.

To Rankine, it was a nod to Michelle Alexanders book The New Jim Crow, which lays out how the war on drugs helped shape a criminal justice system that today systematically disfavors communities of color, and Black men in particular. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow, Alexander wrote. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.

In crafting her elegy for Martin, the Black teen who was gunned down in Florida in 2012 by George Zimmerman, Rankine told the PBS NewsHour she sought to draw on the larger narrative of terrorization, violence and murder that Black Americans have faced throughout history, tracking the years of passage, plantation, migration, of Jim Crow segregation, of poverty, inner cities, profiling.

Read more of Rankines insight about the essay in the passages below.

My brothers are notorious. They have not been to prison. They have been imprisoned. The prison is not a place you enter. It is no place. My brothers are notorious. They do regular things, like wait. On my birthday they say my name. They will never forget that we are named. What is that memory?

The days of our childhood together were steep steps into a collapsing mind. It looked like we rescued ourselves, were rescued. Then there are these days, each day of our adult lives. They will never forget our way through, these brothers, each brother, my brother, dear brother, my dearest brothers, dear heart

Your hearts are broken. This is not a secret though there are secrets. And as yet I do not understand how my own sorrow has turned into my brothers hearts. The hearts of my brothers are broken. If I knew another way to be, I would call up a brother, I would hear myself saying, my brother, dear brother, my dearest brothers, dear heart

On the tip of a tongue one note following another is another path, another dawn where the pink sky is the bloodshot of struck, of sleepless, of sorry, of senseless, shush. Those years of and before me and my brothers, the years of passage, plantation, migration, of Jim Crow segregation, of poverty, inner cities, profiling, of one in three, two jobs, boy, hey boy, each a felony, accumulate into the hours inside our lives where we are all caught hanging, the rope inside us, the tree inside us, its roots our limbs, a throat sliced through and when we open our mouth to speak, blossoms, o blossoms, no place coming out, brother, dear brother, that kind of blue. The sky is the silence of brothers all the days leading up to my call.

If I called Id say good-bye before I broke the good-bye. I say good-bye before anyone can hang up. Dont hang up. My brother hangs up though he is there. I keep talking. The talk keeps him there. The sky is blue, kind of blue. The day is hot. Is it cold? Are you cold? It does get cool. Is it cool? Are you cool?

My brother is completed by sky. The sky is his silence. Eventually, he says, it is raining. It is raining down. It was raining. It stopped raining. It is raining down. He wont hang up. Hes there, hes there but hes hung up though he is there. Good-bye, I say. I break the good-bye. I say good-bye before anyone can hang up, dont hang up. Wait with me. Wait with me though the waiting might be the call of good-byes.

Go here to read the rest:
In writing about Trayvon Martin, this poet saw the history of systemic racism - PBS NewsHour

WVU Today

As the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the ability of many college-bound high school students to take either the ACT or the SAT, West Virginia University has joined a long list of institutions relaxing test score requirements in its admission policies.

If a student is not able to take the SAT or ACT, we will still admit them to WVU as long as they have shown academic ability on other areas of their application, said George Zimmerman, WVU executive director of admissions and recruitment. We have found that GPA is a better predictor of college success and reflects a students overall academic performance.

However, Zimmerman noted some scholarships and individual program admissions, including the PROMISE Scholarship, may still require a test score. As a result, a test score is still recommended in certain cases in order for a student to be considered for the most merit aid.

Some students admitted under the test optional process, who do not meet specific program requirements, will begin their career in the WVU Center for Learning, Advising and Student Success.

We want high school seniors to have confidence that their application will be reviewed without scores, provided that other benchmarks are met, Zimmerman said.

Its also important for students to understand that WVU has a rolling admissions calendar, so we encourage students to apply as soon as possible to get an admissions decision, he added. If a test can benefit their application, students can submit test scores at any point in the process before the start of the fall term, Zimmerman said.

The change will take effect Aug. 1 for admission to spring and fall 2021 terms and will be re-evaluated in time for the spring 2022 term.

Read the rest here:
ACT/SAT optional in spring admission - Dominion Post - The Dominion Post

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The cancel culture is getting out of hand. Some folks insist on getting rid of anything that offends them, with no concern about what might offend others. Who can dispute that Black lives matter? Who can dispute that all lives matter? But what about the organization, Black Lives Matter? Go to its website. Its origins are based partly on two falsehoods: first, that killers of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were not acting legally in self-defense.

Actually, there was a nationally televised trial which found George Zimmerman not guilty in the Trayvon Martin case, and then Attorney Gen. Eric Holder investigated the Brown case and cleared Officer Darren Wilson. The BLM websites What We Believe section states: We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and villages that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. So, BLM supports the most self-destructive facet of Black culture, fatherless families, which guarantees much higher rates of school dropout, crime, unemployment, incarceration and suicide.

Also, BLM focuses on the unwarranted killing of blacks by police (these are in fact very few and are exaggerated grossly), but ignores the far greater problem of Black-on-Black murders.

Check the FBI website for 2018, which shows that the murder rate for Black-on-white is 12 times that for white-on-Black. LM is pushing to defund police, which is resulting in an explosion of violent crime, disproportionately by Blacks against Blacks. This is anarchy. How is any of this helping Black lives? Its not. Its ending them. So apparently only some Black lives matter to BLM yet BLM signs proliferate at civil rights marches.

Why should non-Blacks not find this organization offensive and want to cancel it? And why should they empathize with the civil rights movement when BLM purports to speak for most Black people?

LT. COL. WALT BRINKER

U.S. Army (retired)

Eastover, N.C.

See the article here:
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: To BLM, some Black lives matter - Washington Times

The BLM movement isnt a recent group, nor led by an ungodly alliance. But like every movement, there are those who for various reasons try to usurp authority claiming to represent them. Its been around since July 2013, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of African American teen Trayvon Martin 17 months earlier, in February 2012.

If religion was the best representative, then why didnt religious leaders start it or form one of their own? Why was one highly respected black minister assassinated over 50 years ago?

Shaun King did say what Mr. Waugh said he did. But he is not a leader of BLM, though he is a prominent left-wing fundraiser, activist and minister. Hes not even a fundraiser for BLM. The truth is, on Sept. 12, 2019, Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson wrote a lengthy article raising multiple concerns in regards to King, especially related to fundraising. If you are going to judge all by the acts and words of a few then that has to be done to the police as well. You dont get it both ways.

I am a news junkie. I dont listen to sound bites and videos of one station. I do listen to FOX along with several others because the press isnt perfect. Its run by humans who as much as possible try to be unbiased. Yet arent always successful. They all have indisputable evidence that sometimes they have to apologize for. So I research what is said before forming an opinion or debating it with others. I dont presume one is omnipotent.

Sylvia McClelland-Morrison

Ashland

Trump like

a Sadducee

There were two major political parties during the New Testament times in Palestine:the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

The Pharisees were known for insisting that the law of God be observed as the scribes interpreted it and for their special commitment to keeping the laws of tithing and ritual purity.

The Sadducees membership opposed Jesus during His ministry. The Sadducees came from the leading families of the nation the priest, merchants and aristocrats. The high priest and the most powerful members of the priesthood were mainly Sadducees. Many wealthy lay people were also Sadducees.

They enjoyed privileged positions in society and managed to get along well under Roman rule. The Sadducees also rejected the tradition of the elders who were the body of oral and written commentary that interpreted the law of Moses.

Donald Trump is likened to the Sadducees. He also believes in free will,in which the people are responsible for their own prosperity or misfortune. Trump wants to make the law and everyone to abide by his interpretation. He wants to surround himself with people who will agree on his authoritative ways.

Trump is trying to set up a dynasty with his family to follow him in power. Trump looks up to Vladimir Putin and his power over the Russian people, and would like to operate in the same manner as Putin.

If Trump can remove the power of the people and their elected officials who somewhat keep him in check, he will be able to operate as Putin does. As Trump continues to drain the proverbial swamp of the people who do not agree with his way of governing, and as he exercises his authority in controlling the actions of the elected members who are trying to function in their elected duty to operate the government. He uses fear tactics and slanderous utterance in the presence of the whole nation to defame and defeat anyone who may disagree with his fashion of governing.

He has proven to me that he needs to be removed from his diabolic skepticism.

Ralph Martin

Ashland

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Excerpt from:
In Your View: Religion isn't the answer - The Independent