Joe,

It's pretty simple really. The implication is that black lives are not being valued as highly as white lives, hence why an organisation has to remind you that black lives matter.

Actually, it is not all that simple.

If it were as simple as racists valuing people differently based on race, then we could actually fix it by training people not to be racist. This is not the case. The problem is multifold, but Black Lives Matter, and Black History Month completely fail to address any of the big aspects of the problem, except by exacerbating them.

- 1 - Language:

Instead of using more apt terms like dark brown and tan, we use Black and White which are opposites, which creates a basic assumption that Black and White people are fundamentally different. True, the effects are unconscious, but I think they are real.

This would seem to cause our discussions and references to accent differences, not similarities or even more complex relationships.

The terms Black and White are used to refer to race in some situations, and to culture in others. This causes some people to conflate learned behaviors with genetic predispositions. More problematically, it often causes misunderstanding, leading to accusations of racism in response to statements that seek to address cultural issues.

Added to this is the focus on vocabulary. People have somehow come to the conclusion that when it comes to race, which particular words people use matter more than the particular idea being expressed. This creates all sorts of room for misunderstanding, unintended offense, unreasonable outrage, and sometimes the unsupported conclusion that some people's lives are valued more highly than others.

- 2 - Group identities:

Despite the fact that everything people do and experience, we do and experience as individuals, we have a tendency to take on group identities. For example, when a city's football team wins a game, many residents WHO ARE NOT ON THE TEAM may say things like, "We won," despite the fact that we only includes those individuals who actually played the game.

As a result, people who are uninvolved in events often identify with participants in those events, and speak/act/feel as if they were personally involved. Often it does not matter if the events happened before they were born or thousands of miles away from them.

This causes people to manufacture feelings (outrage, guilt, fear, etc.) that warp their perception of how they themselves are or are not valued.

Farces like Black History Month are attempts to deal with the effects of this phenomenon, without addressing its roots. The hope (and possibly the intent) is that modern African-Americans will feel better about themselves, or be more appreciated (personally or as a group) if the society learns about and celebrates the individual achievements of particular Black individuals.

- 3 - Irrelevant categorization:

What makes the group identity issue particularly destructive is the tendency to base these identities on characteristics that are incidental, immutable, and irrelevant to who we are as individual people. Because these categories are not things we choose, or even consciously choose to value, they dehumanize us.

Consider Tupac, Galileo, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Elvis. The use of irrelevant categorization criteria (race) generally groups Tupac and Tyson together, and Elvis and Galileo together. This is despite the fact that Tupac and Elvis had more in common with each other (music, fame, rags-to-riches) and Galileo and Tyson have more in common with each other (scientists who study the heavens).

As a result, people often fail to base their choice of role models, sources of inspiration, etc. on substantial and relatable characteristics. This is why we have a Black History Month, because somehow some folks think that the most relevant thing about historical figures is race, not values, interests, difficulties, etc..

- 4 - Unrealistic negative expectations create self-fulfilling prophecies:

There are many racists on all sides of the issue, but most are well intentioned. (That whole KKK stereotype is just plain not the problem. White cops don't wake up and think, "Yep, I'm gonna go shoot me a nigger today.")

Whole hordes of people have these racist expectations of themselves and others that cloud their perceptions of social interactions.

Many Blacks perceive racism/discrimination to be the primary cause of issues that have deeper personal or situational causes, and roots in disadvantageous cultural behaviors.

Many Blacks have stereotyped Whites as racists, and then attribute all unfavorable outcomes to racism and injustice.

Many Whites have done the same thing.

In regard to an interaction with a White cop and a Black motorist, the motorist's expectations that the cop is racist result in disadvantageous interpretations of cop behavior. The cop's expectations (whether based on race or the simple fact that traffic stops are intrinsically dangerous, or that their is a lot of violent crime in that neighborhood, etc.) do the same thing.

While neither person may be doing anything racist or mal intentioned, the negative expectations on the part of each can result in tensions, escalations, unreasonable statements, complete misinterpretations of each other's intent, and actions that result in someone being shot.

This is then widely publicized as a racial incident, complete with insistences that some people or other, (cops, politicians, White people, society at large) do not value Black lives.

The same thing happens in regard to criminal behavior, education, and employment, where negative expectations lead to behaviors that result in failures, which serve to reinforce the negative expectations.

Are you saying you could not work this out on your own?

You did not.

What I'm saying is that anyone who hasn't taken the trouble to find out that the vast majority of black murders are caused by 'black on black' violence, must have a head full of MAD DOG'S SHIT.

Were you abused as a child by your pedophile father and his perverted friends?

Did you contract one of the more severe social brain damaging diseases?

Is your syphilis induced brain degeneration the reason for your arrested intellect?

Before you come on and spew out your FEIGNED concern for blacks check your facts.

Keep taking the penicillin and your condition may clear up.

Go out in the streets of London and try to have a WHITE LIVES MATTER rally and see how far you get.

I try not to judge that whom I know nothing about. Was he prolife and antieugenics?

It's actually from "Tzar's Dictionary of Bullshit Definitions"

You're calling an entire race lazy but ignoring the obvious socioeconomic aspects which lead to under achievement. Stop acting like America is some sort of meritocratic utopia.

Your fancy words and compound sentences only blind people to your blatant racism.

Have you no shame? America's president, although he has not done anything directly to blacks, has been quite offensive to other ethnic groups who have not, as you say, assimilated, or became successful like Asians.

My dear boy, it's not that blacks are sloshing around in the murky past. Rather, supremacy groups such as the KKK have reawakened this era of horrid behavior by the Americans. So racism is never really gone. It's always there, and it always will be.

It's groups like the KKK who make it quite necessary for a black history month. They're reopening wounds so that they are never LONG GONE.

But... that wasn't my point, or my argument? You're randomly jumping from one thing to another, desperately ranting about something that isn't even relevant.

All I've said is that black history month is a remembrance and celebration of black American history. It's there as a way of educating the current generation on the atrocities of the past, and it acknowledges the horrors that went on in the past. I've not made any points about how we should feel guilty or responsible for the actions of our ancestors, or tried to justify "laziness, lack of executive capacity to form coherent governments and their inability to exercise the necessary self discipline to apply themselves to formal education."

Sounds like you're a bit insecure about this whole black history thing. Don't let it go to your head. You seem to be getting very frustrated over a very simple matter.

I've never heard either of those terms used before, other than by conservatives using them to claim that liberals are using them.