Happy Bastille Day!
One of the richest whitest towns in the United States, Concord, Massachusetts, is next to our local airport (Hanscom Field). Driving into Concord one passes a tall white church with a “Black Lives Matter” flag out front. (I have never seen a non-white person in the vicinity of this church.)
When the congregation put up the flag, I’m wondering if they had a plan for when the flag can be taken down.
Surely nobody is going to step forward and say “We don’t care about black lives anymore, so let’s have a ‘No human being is illegal’ or rainbow flag instead,” right?
If someone says “African-Americans are doing better than white Americans, so we can take the flag down,” that can always be refuted with at least one statistic on which white Americans are doing better (I don’t think this is true for Asian-Americans!). In any case, the typical member of the congregation would have virtually no contact with black Americans and therefore wouldn’t have any direct personal experience to offer.
Will we therefore find a descendant of that flag 100 years from now?
[Separately, last weekend I flew a helicopter tour for a couple of African-American local college students who’d bought a Groupon from East Coast Aero Club. As we flew over downtown Concord I pointed out the flag in as neutral tone as I could muster. The passengers broke into fits of laughter.]
Maybe in their minds black people live in a far off land, oppress ed by some unfamiliar power.
It’s like those Free Tibet flags.
I’m surprised chinese citizens in China haven’t flown the black lives matter flag in response to the free Tibet flags in america.
Maybe in their minds black people live in a far off land, oppress ed by some unfamiliar power.
Perhaps, but that wouldn’t make much sense. BLM is mainly about how the police treat black citizens. There are probably stories in the news occasionally about the Boston police.
Furthermore, if you go back in history, there were quite a few abolitionists in New York and New England in the early part of the 19th century. Many probably knew few slaves or former slaves, but that’s irrelevant. There were a lot of churches that had activist groups in the 1980s that organized to oppose American support for tyrants and terrorists in Central America. It’s possible that few of them ever met any of the affected population, but that’s also irrelevant.
I’m surprised chinese citizens in China haven’t flown the black lives matter flag in response to the free Tibet flags in america.
Many remarks of this sort could be made. There’s a Holocaust museum in Washington, DC, so a museum should be built in Berlin to document America’s genocide of its indigenous population.
Whenever there’s a new cause du jour, I’d imagine. (I guess earth day and pride weren’t enough to do it)
Vince: “there were quite a few abolitionists in New York and New England in the early part of the 19th century”
I’m not sure why this is surprising. New York enforced slavery until 1827 (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_New_York ).
This post does not evoke the best aspects of our nature, even though it does have a helicopter in it.
If you think having more children is good, married whites have more children than married Asian-Americans. Asians also earn more than whites, but have more workers per household to get there.