A powerful conclusion to this New York Times editorial:
The “Black Lives Matter” movement focuses on the fact that black citizens have long been far more likely than whites to die at the hands of the police, and is of a piece with this history. Demonstrators who chant the phrase are making the same declaration that voting rights and civil rights activists made a half-century ago. They are not asserting that black lives are more precious than white lives. They are underlining an indisputable fact — that the lives of black citizens in this country historically have not mattered, and have been discounted and devalued. People who are unacquainted with this history are understandably uncomfortable with the language of the movement. But politicians who know better and seek to strip this issue of its racial content and context are acting in bad faith. They are trying to cover up an unpleasant truth and asking the country to collude with them.
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Ken Rowland
“People who are unacquainted with this history are understandably uncomfortable with the language of the movement.” Really? WOW! There are people out there in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (older than four(4), ‘unacquainted with this history’? Now there’s a vacuous thought. Surely you jest; or maybe not! Best have your team at Northeastern University regress; GO BACK to Journalism 101. Learn to become storytellers… historical journalist of say, the last 250-years. Everything else on THIS point is empty-rhetoric if they proceed ‘unwashed’. OR as if in a personal opinion-piece; an Op-Ed column and/or LETTER-to-the-EDITOR, telling the rhetorical-story of today they could be writing for the ‘bird-feeder’ drop-cloth of tomorrow. I agree with you on the point, i.e. ‘(But) politicians who know better and seek to strip this issue of its racial content and context are acting in bad faith. They are trying to cover up an unpleasant truth and asking the country to collude with them.’ We have a problem OVER HERE… HELLO! (to paraphrase) and it IS about immigration, and it IS RACIAL… and your new generation of Journalist best dig deep into its DNA and viscosity… or they’re just grown’n up and ‘(fluff’n) in the wind’.