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  • ” White dad with Black kids: George Floyd was my wake-up call”

    ” White dad with Black kids: George Floyd was my wake-up call”

    White dad with Black kids: George Floyd was my wake-up call:

    […]

    There is one particular situation that played out last summer that I have been replaying in my head since the death of George Floyd. My wife and I were on our way out to lunch and I needed to run an errand, so I stopped to go into a store while my wife waited in the car and began talking on the phone. Several minutes later, a passerby had evidently found it suspicious that there was a Black woman sitting alone in the passenger side of a black Mercedes SUV and decided to notify the police.

    The White officer responding to the call approached the situation as one of pending danger, asking my wife repeatedly whether there were drugs or firearms in the car. When I emerged from the store, and he realized that I — a White 45-year-old — was her husband, his demeanor instantly changed, and he apologized for the inconvenience.

    […]

    All lives won’t matter until Black Lives Matter.

  • Spread the Word — Black Lives Matter

    Spread the Word — Black Lives Matter

    Imagine that you’re sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don’t get any. So you say “I should get my fair share.” And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, “everyone should get their fair share.” Now, that’s a wonderful sentiment — indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share also. However, dad’s smart-ass comment just dismissed you and didn’t solve the problem that you still haven’t gotten any!

    The problem is that the statement “I should get my fair share” had an implicit “too” at the end: “I should get my fair share, too, just like everyone else.” But your dad’s response treated your statement as though you meant “only I should get my fair share”, which clearly was not your intention. As a result, his statement that “everyone should get their fair share,” while true, only served to ignore the problem you were trying to point out.

    That’s the situation of the “black lives matter” movement. Culture, laws, the arts, religion, and everyone else repeatedly suggest that all lives should matter. Clearly, that message already abounds in our society.

    The problem is that, in practice, the world doesn’t work the way. You see the film Nightcrawler? You know the part where Renee Russo tells Jake Gyllenhal that she doesn’t want footage of a black or latino person dying, she wants news stories about affluent white people being killed? That’s not made up out of whole cloth — there is a news bias toward stories that the majority of the audience (who are white) can identify with. So when a young black man gets killed (prior to the recent police shootings), it’s generally not considered “news”, while a middle-aged white woman being killed is treated as news. And to a large degree, that is accurate — young black men are killed in significantly disproportionate numbers, which is why we don’t treat it as anything new. But the result is that, societally, we don’t pay as much attention to certain people’s deaths as we do to others. So, currently, we don’t treat all lives as though they matter equally.

    Just like asking dad for your fair share, the phrase “black lives matter” also has an implicit “too” at the end: it’s saying that black lives should also matter. But responding to this by saying “all lives matter” is willfully going back to ignoring the problem. It’s a way of dismissing the statement by falsely suggesting that it means “only black lives matter,” when that is obviously not the case. And so saying “all lives matter” as a direct response to “black lives matter” is essentially saying that we should just go back to ignoring the problem.

    TL;DR: The phrase “Black lives matter” carries an implicit “too” at the end; it’s saying that black lives should also matter. Saying “all lives matter” is dismissing the very problems that the phrase is trying to draw attention to.

    u/GeekAesthete

    All lives SHOULD matter, but they won’t until Black Lives Matter

  • “What’s spreading faster than coronavirus in the US? Racist assaults and ignorant attacks against Asians”

    “What’s spreading faster than coronavirus in the US? Racist assaults and ignorant attacks against Asians”

    ZOMG I reported some dude on Nextdoor a while ago who made inflammatory remarks towards China, Chinese people and anything that comes out of China. 😩 All because the virus originated from China.

    Folks, we dealt with this after the WTC attack on Sept. 11, 2001 when Middle Easterners were all thought to be terrorists just because SOME people did something bad and they happened to look like these people. And waaaay back when Pearl Harbor was attacked during WWII when Japanese Americans were interned. We don’t need to do this again. Please.

    Sometimes the most devastating hits are financial. At many Chinese restaurants, income has been decimated.
    ….
    “A customer called and said, ‘Mainland China has this disease. We are not going to come out anymore,’” Wu said.

    What’s spreading faster than coronavirus in the US? Racist assaults and ignorant attacks against Asians

    Do…people understand how viruses work? 🤨

  • FINALLY…The Impossible Whopper

    FINALLY…The Impossible Whopper

    Waaaay back in March last year, I decided to switch to being vegan. I won’t go into too much detail, but the main reasons were for animal welfare and for the environment. And hearing that Burger King just recently introduced the Impossible Whopper to the world made me go 😱.

    When my meat-eating peers decided to journey out to get a hold of Popeye’s recently introduced, much hyped chicken sandwich, I decided I would go out with them and get BK’s recently introduced, much hyped Impossible Whopper.

    It normally comes with mayo and (I’m assuming like most cheeseburgers) cheese, which I ordered without. When we got home, I added my own Follow Your Heart vegenaise and the last bit of (ancient) Violife block cheese I bought a long time ago.

    The taste was juuuust like a regular fast food burger. Depending on your view of fast food burgers, this may be a good or bad thing. But there you go. The Cheesecake Factory sells Impossible burgers, but you can tell they’re just black bean burgers. The only other place I know of that can cook Impossible burgers to taste like fast food burgers is the food truck, Vuture Food. 🥺❤️ So yeah, it’s pretty darn awesome.

    And oh yesss, I remember when it was first introduced, there was a lot of banter on both sides of various issues.

    The Impossible Whopper Is Cooked On The Same Surface As Meat!

    (Ye gods, the lawsuits involving this. 😑)

    Unless if it’s actually stated it’s cooked on a separate surface (or if it’s from a vegan/vegetarian-only restaurant), expect your meat substitute to be cooked on the same surface as meat.

    Take these into consideration:

    • Places like BK didn’t originally have anywhere to cook non-meat meat, sooo suddenly expecting them to have a separate area is unreasonable.
    • Having your veggie burger cooked on a surface that was previously used for meat doesn’t change the fact that someone ahead of you ordered meat.
    • Also making a big fuss like this just discourages more restaurants from wanting to serve non-meat eating people, which in turn will mean there are less people who will want to try veggie foods. When you think about the above bullet point, this actually hurts animals more.

    There are some non-meat eating people who can’t even digest the slightest amount of meat juices (I thankfully, might not be one of them). If you’re one of these people, you might want to try veg-only restaurants. Burger King will also microwave your Impossible Whopper for you if you ask.

    (But really….microwaved Impossible burgers…? 🤔)

    Burger King Profits Off Of Animal Cruelty And Exploitation! Why Are You OK With Supporting This Company?

    Ohhhhkay, unless you actually grow your own food, you’re always going to be supporting a company that sells meat, eggs or dairy–usually all three. Trader Joe’s, Sprouts, Whole Foods?

    Also by buying veggie foods from companies that also sell animal products tells said company that there is a market for veggie foods and that they should make more! And more animals win!

    *insert major healthy concern here like soy, the fact that it’s junk food, etc*

    No, it’s not healthy. But neither are regular cheeseburgers. Unless if you’re eating an Impossible Whopper (and other processed veggie junk foods) a lot, I wouldn’t worry about it. Pretend it’s a meated cheeseburger and have it as a treat. 🤷‍♀️ I’m actually excited meat eaters are willing to give veggie foods a try.