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City-council candidate claims Black Lives Matter set race relations back 50 years

By adamg on Wed, 10/25/2023 - 12:35pm

At-large candidate Bridget Nee-Walsh made the comments at a forum organized by Boston Caribbean-Americans - drawing a rebuke from incumbent at-large Councilor Ruthzee Louijeune, who is herself Haitian-American.

Neighborhoods: 
Boston
Topics: 
Politics
Free tagging: 
Bridget Nee-Walsh
city councik
2024 elections


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Comments

By tachometer on Wed, 10/25/2023 - 12:56pm.

Nee-Walsh said:

It divided a lot of communities across the city, when everybody matters.

You know that she was one of the simpletons saying "All lives matter" as a rebuttal which ignored the obvious fact that the slogan means "Black lives matter too.

By Tim Mc. on Wed, 10/25/2023 - 2:10pm.

Lots of people don't seem to understand that distinction.

Also, I actually love that "too" phrasing, and have somehow never heard it before. I kind of like it more, honestly?

By emac on Wed, 10/25/2023 - 5:47pm.

I think that black lives matter as a phrase is powerful because it’s divisive, it causes people like Bridget Nee-Walsh to show their true colors (while also explicitly pointing to the systematic, racist threats to Black lives). Adding the “too” is like saying “all lives matter:” it’s wishy-washy, big and meaningless.

By Tim Mc. on Thu, 10/26/2023 - 10:20am.

although I can see where you're coming from on it.

(Partly I like it because you would no longer be able to change "black" to "all" and have it sound meaningful.)

By SamWack on Thu, 10/26/2023 - 6:51am.

That relegates Black lives to an afterthought, a second place. "Oh yes, we forgot about you! your lives matter too, sometimes, when it's convenient."

By HenryAlan 2.0 on Wed, 10/25/2023 - 1:22pm.

Given the presence of a few total lunatics in the race, I was uneasily considering voting for her, but I guess that's out the window now.

People who are uneasy with a fairly simple, straight forward illustration that racism is a problem in this country, are probably racists themselves.

By emac on Wed, 10/25/2023 - 5:27pm.

“All lives matter” karen also thinks we need hundreds more cops.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/10/17/metro/boston-city-councils-at-lar...

By emac on Wed, 10/25/2023 - 1:26pm.

Are worth quoting.

“I think that whole thing came out of just a very racially divisive time that we had. We had Covid going on. We had things going on globally, across America. And it brought us back. It brought us back 50 years.” She added: “It divided a lot of communities across the city, when everybody matters.”

Given the chance to clarify:

Nee-Walsh stood by her comments on Tuesday. “I think it just really highly intensified and separated communities,” she said of Black Lives Matter. On the campaign trail, Nee-Walsh has described herself as “right of center but open-minded.”

Goodbye Karen.

By erik g on Thu, 10/26/2023 - 10:37am.

Covid happened 8+ years after BLM formed. Also, talking about racial divisions in this country in the past tense is, uh... well, it's certainly a choice, that she made.

Bonus historical idiocy: "50 years back" is quite the statement. I wonder if she's even aware of what happened in 1968..?

By lbb on Wed, 10/25/2023 - 1:30pm.

"I, a white person, am used to being able to ignore the reality of racism because it doesn't affect me, and so when it is pointed out that racism is indeed a real problem, my defensive reaction is to blame the people who mentioned it rather than the people who did it."

By cinnamngrl on Wed, 10/25/2023 - 1:45pm.

Our society does not demonstrate care for all races equally. We can't fix that until we admit that.

By dan r on Wed, 10/25/2023 - 2:17pm.

Nananana

Hey hey hey

By Scratchie on Wed, 10/25/2023 - 2:26pm.

What she meant to say was that it had taken us 50 years to get them to stop complaining and now they've gone and gotten all uppity again.

By Daan on Wed, 10/25/2023 - 2:48pm.

Asked tongue in cheek. Everybody knows what they don't we? Or what gets in the way of improved race relations between Blacks, Browns and White, especially considering that race relations with Asians seem much better than a century ago and thank goodness race relations between the Jewish and Christian races are nowhere near as bad as a century ago. For that matter race relations between Protestants and Catholics have gotten much better as well.

Again written with tongue in cheek.

Race is probably one of the longest lasting and most deeply believed results of a propaganda campaign of the past 500 years ago. There is no such thing as human races.

The statement sounds academic and irrelevant in the real world. But maybe relevance can be sen by asking whether continuing to use the word actually reinforces the false idea. By reinforcing the falsity of human races it is easier to not see that real motivations behind what we call, for lack of better word, racism.

From the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture:

The term “race,” used infrequently before the 1500s, was used to identify groups of people with a kinship or group connection. The modern-day use of the term “race” is a human invention.

By lbb on Wed, 10/25/2023 - 5:00pm.

The statement sounds academic and irrelevant in the real world.

Because it is.

"If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences."

By SamWack on Thu, 10/26/2023 - 7:00am.

There are some who think that, because race is a fiction, racism is also a fiction. This is a misunderstanding. Race is a fiction; racism is real.

By Don't Panic on Thu, 10/26/2023 - 1:23am.

"Black LIves Matter" isn't, and wasn't about race relations. It was about Police Officers indiscriminately killing Black people at will on the slightest pretext and usually getting away with it all across America. A pandemic of sorts that still goes on, but the "Black LIves Matter" movement made consequences for those actions a real thing to Police again.

By emac on Thu, 10/26/2023 - 9:48pm.

Blue lives matter is a response to Black Lives Matter, an explicit rejection of BLM’s contention that police shouldn’t be allowed to indiscriminately kill black people. Which is to say: blue lives matter is explicitly racist.