I agree with you.
I also agree with IndigoOcean about most of her post, for example, we must demilitarize the police immediately. That's part of returning to a constitutional republic and not the crony-capitalist fake democracy currently in place. (I just hope this isn't a pretext to bringing in international - maybe UN - troops to keep the peace.)
We also need to spread awareness of what racism actually is. It can exist from and to any ethnicity of people, for example. The lie that only "white people" can be racist is ITSELF a racist idea. Another aspect many people don't understand is that talking about race isn't necessarily racist. Some people think that just saying "black" is racist, for crying out loud. Or that bringing up race, in the context of discussion (like here), is itself racist. That's so misguided. Calling racism on everything means we can't have a discussion.
It was so much simpler as a kid, for me. I used to watch Sesame Street as a toddler, and Gordon was a regular then. A middle-aged black man with a shiny bald head. One day, my parents introduced me to a friend of a friend I'd never met before. They said "what do you notice about this man?"
I said "hmmmm, he looks like Gordon??"
They laughed and said "oh, you mean because he has black skin?"
I looked at his skin, and sure enough, it was black. But I had barely noticed that until they mentioned it. "No, because he's bald!"
Long story short, the adults assumed I was born to notice skin colour above all else, but I surprised them.
I think I want most of the things BLM says they want. It's just that I don't want to get there through more racism. Maybe it's a bit like how I want most of the things modern feminists want, I just don't want to get there through more sexism.
And yeah, I have a penis and fair skin, so people will judge my opinion based on that more than anything else, but I've given this a lot of thought and research. I don't think I've reached my conclusions for selfish reasons, but hey, I'm always open to discuss it :)
I can't argue against any of what you say here.
The problem is, when most simply see through their own perspective, rather than a multitude of perspectives we cannot trust each other to work with
one another.
We need to see the big picture, instead of how 'I see it' or 'my people/culture' sees it, so we can address the real problem at its core. Until then, we will remain divided and by many more metrics than just skin color.
Obsessing about race and using it as a reason, excuse or weapon only takes away from what we have in common. As they say, "divided we fall" and right now, divided we will remain under these short-sighted emotional movements.
I think you're combining ideas about racism and racial prejudice. They aren't the same thing. Most people use the word racism when they are talking about racial prejudice. People in general are a prejudiced species. It's a fundamental part of our pattern-recognizing minds, that filter out things that don't fit previous narratives (more and more as we get older) and amplify our notice of things that do.
All in all I agree with you though. Racial prejudice is one of the most nefarious types of prejudice, and anyone can do it. Dismantling the power structures of racism is a different thing though. When you talk about defunding the police, that's actually fighting racism, not prejudice. It does more than that too, but it actually takes a bite out of the power that is behind racism if it is to be racism.