No matter what you are doing now, can you all please just take 5 minutes out of your busy days to watch this video.

I grew up in East Belfast, during the troubles and only ever saw one side with one voice. By my teens my head was filled with words of hate and the lack education https://twitter.com/NBCSportsSoccer/status/1275469840388706304

in school about history and religious education. I basically got taught Christianity in RE which gave me no understanding - and worse, an ignorance - of other religions. But in history - I got the victors version of events.
As Arnie Rimmer said "History is written by the winners"

But it makes you ignorant when you go out into the world and meet people of different races and religions. For me, I couldn't understand their point of view at all - because the reality of what had happened in my head differed from theirs.

It differed from the truth.

I don't understand why it's so hard for people to listen.

We all have our own opinions on things. We all want to believe that our perspective of the world is correct. But just as two people standing at different places witnessing an event will have a different story of what

happened - two people with different lives, from different countries, of different colours or different religions will have differing perspectives on how racist the world is today.

We need to be open minded to the idea that our perspective is wrong, and listen.

If we listen & hear that others in the human race are hurting - we either have empathy in our hearts and want things to change for them. Or they don't, which is a sad indictment on those individuals and maybe our species.

We have to move forward without those lacking empathy.

And once we agree that we want things to change, to help those are hurting - we have to be specific in what the problem is.

No problem can be solved without it first being identified as a problem. And the problem the black community have is - their lives don't matter.

Therefore the very specific statement they are making is Black Lives Matter.

If you disagree with any of those three simple words - ask yourself why. Because if you change any word of that statement - you are either saying their lives don't matter to you, or you don't have an

interest in empathising with black people, identifying their problem and in creating a statement to ask for change.

All Lives Matter doesn't identify any problem. It isn't asking for any change. It's just an ideal we would like to achieve. It is how the world SHOULD work.

But for now, the world doesn't work that way.

So to achieve your goal of ALL lives mattering, first we need Black Lives to Matter.

To head off a few replies to this - which I won't read never mind reply to. I expect to see a lot of =random([western name]+[8-digit number]) algorithm created accounts use logical fallacies such as strawman or whatabout arguments. I'm not interested.

Also - on crime vs morality.

Imagine society collapsed and civilisation had to be rebuilt on another planet. Imagine only black people could accumulate wealth, own land, hold positions of power, write laws, etc. White people were either slaves or paid poverty wages.

How do you see that scenario playing out over time? Where do you think most crime would be in that society. Even if those at the bottom literally claw and fight for basic rights, do you think the hundreds of years of accumulated power and wealth on one side would allow for

equality over night. Or would that simply be passed down from generation to generation? So that those with that accumulated wealth, with better access to education and therefore positions of power, able to accept unpaid internships in politics etc chose for those at the bottom

to be paid slave/poverty level wages which will perpetuate the cycle. Thus those who start at the bottom will remain at the bottom - and if those who started at the bottom was designated by race - then those who remain at the bottom will be largely designated by race.

If you look throughout history, those who acted immorally and unethically hid behind the law.

Anyway, I'm sick, tired and going back to resting and recovering. Don't expect replies to this - there will likely be none.

I'm just sad that we are still here as a society. That we are seeing & hearing from the likes of Robbie Earle and it STILL doesn't find anything within us.

Oh and apologies in advance for any and all typos and poorly written/explained parts of text above. As mentioned - I'm sick and tired and couldn't be arsed proofreading it.