"The Psychological Warfare Being Waged Against Black Lives Matter"

"my old friend’s question says much to me about the quotidian ways that otherwise well-meaning white people misunderstand racial discourse in this country. Like many Americans, I watched horrified last week as news unfolded of Vester Lee Flanagan’s cold-blooded execution of a newscaster and a cameraman in Virginia. Then, just two short days later, the news that Shannon J. Miles, a Black man with a previously documented history of mental illness, had executed Deputy Goforth made my heart stop.

These killings of white people are tragic and inexcusable. That should be said without equivocation. But after I affirmed this same fact to my old friend, I asked him, “What would make you think I think otherwise?” ...

the Black Lives Matter Movement is not an anti-cop movement. It is a movement that vigorously and voraciously opposes the overpolicing of Black communities and the state-sanctioned killing of unarmed Black people (and, yes, all people) by the police. It is a movement that insists on holding police accountable for their violence and that will hold police to a higher standard precisely because the state gives police the right to use lethal force. With more power comes more responsibility.

But here’s the thing: White people know this. Conservative Black people who insist on speaking about the rule of law and the issue of Black-on-Black crime know this. This is basic. They know that these young people don’t want to kill cops. They want the cops to stop killing them."

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/psychological-warfare-being-waged-against-black-lives-matter