To answer your first paragraph - Because this forum contains people more accessible / contactable and BLM is not exactly prevalent in my local area so asking the locals is not much more than what i already know or what i am aware of.
I should clarify it is not that i don't see racism, i don't live in the UK so i don't hear the news as much as yourself for London etc. I just want to know if this is a proportionate response because there has been violence in the past but never this much reaction to it, and the media like to sensationalize a lot of things so i wanted more of a feet on the ground opinion.
I am not exactly upset, more annoyed by the excessive reporting on it - even if the situation calls for excessiveness to get people to listen to the message, is everybody, companies etc. doing it for the right reasons, or are they just bandwagoning?
(not exactly relevant but wasn't too long ago that Irish people were discriminated against lmao so thankfully i have nothing to complain about nowadays)
And again the complaints of ethnic minorities at least on a local level has not applied to me directly yet, so i would not know. I do think racism is more to do with the human nature of that person is different to me therefore i should be afraid but this can be applied to all different arguments.
Well first thanks for actually taking the time to respond - the reason why I replied in the first place was because it seemed like a genuine question, opening yourself up to differing opinions which is always valuable - even if a thread like this is gonna get memed to shit by people too lazy to actually get involved and join the discussion.
Fair enough that this is your first port of call for getting opinions outside your family/friends/local circle where, if you're living in Ireland, I assume it isn't as big an issue due to there being just fewer BAME people in general - as well as not having that imperialist history which is part of the issue in the UK. I would just say that typically places like these aren't the best to get actual information from (even though I realise you're just looking for opinions, I'm just saying they aren't going to be representative of the wider public due to how niche this game/community is), so you're going to get a lot of bandwaggoning of opinions here as well.
I can see the frustration in all these corporations shoving a political stance down your throats. And yes, it is virtue signalling. It happened a few years ago in the UK when gay marriage was on the table and companies started using the rainbow flag in their logos etc. I don't think it's genuine at all, and clearly they are just hopping on the bandwagon and trying to appear trendy - note how they are always late to the party and never do these things out of their own initiative. So I would see corporations doing this not out of the goodness of their hearts but rather because they can see which way the wind is blowing on an issue and want to make sure they can still market to people. I would use corporations as a measure for how big a social issue is rather than them having any influence over it.
I know too well how Irish people were discriminated against in the UK. My grandparents were Irish and when they moved to London in the 50s there would be signs on businesses that said "No blacks, no Irish, no dogs", something my grandparents never really got over. So there are definitely historical and current examples of racism that aren't about skin colour, but the point of the BLM movement isn't to try to undermine those issues, it's just about putting things in perspective.
I think the reason this has picked up so much momentum compared to previous protests is the widespread social media element. If you go on reddit to /r/publicfreakout or /r/2020policebrutality you can see hundreds of videos from the past month of mainly American police being way too heavy handed with peaceful black and BLM protesters, whilst also ignoring or even encouraging violence from groups on the other side. Trump has been throwing fuel on the fire as well, using racist dogwhistles to prevent people from using their constitutional right to protest.
TL;DR Corporations don't give a shit and are jumping on a bandwagon, but that is evidence of the size of the movement and scale of the issue at hand. Fortunately, most of us here will never have experienced racism against us so I think we should be more willing to stop and listen to what black and ethnic minority people have to say about it.
