Thread by @michaelharriot

I can’t answer this question for Bill Maher but YOU CAN

A thread.

https://twitter.com/thekevindalton/status/1650012159349497856

If you have a Facebook account go to the “Events” section, and search for “Stop the Violence” events in your area

If you aren’t on FB, you can do it on @eventbrite too.

Now, do the same for “Black Lives Matter” or “police brutality”

Shocking isn’t it?

It doesn’t matter where you live, I can almost GUARANTEE YOU that the effort to stop what white people call “Black on Black crime” outweighs the efforts to stop police brutality.

But we aren’t done yet.

When people say “Black Lives Matter,” they aren’t talking about an organization, they are talking about an idea, a principle. But even if they were talking about the organization and they HATE IT, they still don’t have to worry.

See, most of the people people people reading this don’t have a Black Lives Matter chapter in their city. There are about 40 official chapters nationwide

Compare that to the organizations trying to stop violence in their community.

On the other hand, If you take the Divine 9

(White people might have to Google it) you have 4 million college-educated Black people who are dues paying members of community service organizations, youth ou organizations that spend millions of dollars and tens of millions on exactly what Maher is talking about

And that doesn’t include the other civic, fraternal, & social organizations that Black people donate their time and money to.

In fact, Black Americans give MORE of their wealth and income to charity and community groups than other groups

But it’s not just organizations and money. Black people volunteer MORE OFTEN, while Hispanic people volunteer more hours

To be fair, Black people do talk about police brutality & racism.But why aren’t Black people as concerned about gun violence in their own communities as they are about police brutality?

Well here’s the thing:

Bill Maher doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

You should also wonder if I know what the fuck I’m talking about. Most polls have very few Black participants, so they have to heavily weigh their results.

To get a REAL idea, you’d need an experience pollster who just polled Black people?

But who?

To be fair, there’s a reason why this narrative persists . There’s an explanation why Bill Maher doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. There’s a good reason dumb white people have 1,383,474 variations of the same “butwhatabout” question:

They’re white

See, if you told white people that the Ques in NC & SC fund, volunteer, staff and organize a camp for black boys, they’d say

“What’s a que?”

They probably wouldn’t know enough to move out of the way when Atomic Dog was playing

They probably have never heard of Upward Bound or Grades Up Guns Down or the thousands of local Black-led community organizations.

They probably have no idea that every HBCU basically becomes a summer camp every summer.

I HATE hearing the “Black people need to…” narrative…

Not because I don’t think Black people don’t need to do things, but because I hear it SO MUCH.

I hear it at every Black church, barbershop, cookout, all-white party, Thanksgiving dinner and community meeting.

They’re ALWAYS talking about it.

But when Black people are doing something, I NEVER SEE Bill Maher there. Fox News never shows up at the “Stop the Violence” March. Ain’t no Lutheran church pastors or police unions or GOP donors trying to help

WHITE PEOPLE ARE NOT THERE.

So the next time Bill Maher or Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens asks a variation of this uniformed, counterfeit question, ask them how they know what Black people are doing

We are actually doing something. But we also KNOW THINGS

We know crime is a socioeconomic phenomenon.

We know that if we made of the list of things that cause Black on Black crime, before we get to “what Black people need to do….” We’d have to address:

Underfunded schools
Unequal education
School discipline
employment
Housing

Financial discrimination
Healthcare
Food insecurity
Unfair hiring practices
Policing
White people wearing dreadlocks (my personal issue)

And THEN we’d get to WHAT the people who WHITE PEOPLE NEED TO DO. They have the wealth, power & privilege but THEY DON’T DO SHIT.

Now, I’m not asking them to do much.

I’m asking them to stop
blocking progress by obstructing THE SHIT BLACK PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY TRYING TO DO on common-sense gun laws & criminal justice reform & policing & equal education & voting rights

Because here’s a revelation:

We can dislike crime AND ask police to stop shooting us in the face.

We can hold ourselves accountable AND speak out about racism

And if you only hear the objections about racism and cops and inequality, it’s because WE ARE NOT TALKING TO YOU

If you were actually IN a black community, you’d realize that you don’t know what TF black people talk about or do.

If you are disproportionately represented in 98% of the Fortune 500, every state legislatures, the judiciary, presidency, governors & the Avengers…

Why are YOU playing the victim by bringing up the one thing that you don’t know shit about?

So here’s what you can do:

I’m this thread, Drop a name of a Black-led community organization that people can help.

Mine is my family’s community org

andstillwerisesc.org

And if you don’t want to help any of these, it’s still cool.

Theres something else that people like Bill Maher can also do to help

Shut the fuck up