That's disingenuous, and breaks the basis of your argument.
The problem isn't dying at all, it's why.
They're angry about a murder, which reminds people there are too many murders.
Angry at a murder by a police officer who thought he could casually do so in broad daylight surrounded by onlookers, because he lives in a culture where he expects to get away with it.
Angry at a culture where a police officer can reasonably think he'll get away with it, because they often do.
Angry at the other officers on the scene who went along with it instead of intervening.
Angry at all the other racist murders that keep happening, and systematic racism on a massive scale in general.
That said I thoroughly agree with your point about protecting the elderly. And for that matter, protecting large numbers of young with asthma and diabetes, and conditions nobody knows about because they didn't matter before. (How easily people reduce these things to "just old people" so they can be ageist).
Trouble is, there's a real dilemma over the right and effective things to do. I think there is a deep human social instinct in play. The protests are not about one person dying, or one person being murdered even. They are about a serious systemic problem which undoubtedly results in large numbers of people, more black than not, dying prematurely. As well as a culture problem, which maintains that problem as those with more influence in society treat the problem as unimportant. I would not be surprised if the number of premature black person deaths in the USA, directly or indirectly caused by racism, comfortably exceeds the number of deaths caused directly or indirectly by COVID-19 in the end.
They're not angry about someone dying!
That's disingenuous, and breaks the basis of your argument.
The problem isn't dying at all, it's why.
They're angry about a murder, which reminds people there are too many murders.
Angry at a murder by a police officer who thought he could casually do so in broad daylight surrounded by onlookers, because he lives in a culture where he expects to get away with it.
Angry at a culture where a police officer can reasonably think he'll get away with it, because they often do.
Angry at the other officers on the scene who went along with it instead of intervening.
Angry at all the other racist murders that keep happening, and systematic racism on a massive scale in general.
That said I thoroughly agree with your point about protecting the elderly. And for that matter, protecting large numbers of young with asthma and diabetes, and conditions nobody knows about because they didn't matter before. (How easily people reduce these things to "just old people" so they can be ageist).
Trouble is, there's a real dilemma over the right and effective things to do. I think there is a deep human social instinct in play. The protests are not about one person dying, or one person being murdered even. They are about a serious systemic problem which undoubtedly results in large numbers of people, more black than not, dying prematurely. As well as a culture problem, which maintains that problem as those with more influence in society treat the problem as unimportant. I would not be surprised if the number of premature black person deaths in the USA, directly or indirectly caused by racism, comfortably exceeds the number of deaths caused directly or indirectly by COVID-19 in the end.