Comment by malcolmgreaves
5 years ago
> While I don't support BLM/M4BL, (the hashtag, not the sentence
This is a bullshit take. You either think black people are human and their lives matter. Or you don't. There's no "not the hashtag" -- the hashtag is the literal "black lives matter." The entire point of the political movement is to recognize that black people are people too and that western institutions of power * do not * recognize this truth.
> You either think black people are human and their lives matter.
You are making a false equivalence here. I can (and do) believe that black people are fully human and their lives matter.
I can also agree with certain points of the BLM movement, again, disagreeing with their reasoning, but supporting some the overarching ideas.
> The entire point of the political movement is to recognize that black people are people too
Based upon their website[0], they seem to have a much broader idea of "what matters" that goes far beyond "black people are people to" that will, undoubtedly, cause many people to shy away from the hashtag (but not the sentence).
[0]: https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-matters-2020/
Again, I think the George Floyd's killing, underscores a massive problem that needs to be justified, but you don't have to agree with BLM to want to see that problem solved.
> [...] the hashtag is the literal "black lives matter."
No, it's not, that's exactly the point. Otherwise #WhiteLivesMatter is completely valid too. After all, literally "white lives matter" is true, right?
This is exactly the bad faith argumentation that the GP and TFA are about. "You either support our hashtag or you do not think black people are people too."
> The entire point of the political movement is to recognize that black people are people too and that western institutions of power * do not * recognize this truth.
That's your interpretation of a hashtag. And with that you go around beating people over the head with it, demanding they add all the right emojis to their Twitter bio or be called a racist. Ie. exactly the destructive behavior TFA is about.
The idea that BLM stands for just a single thing ("black people are people too") is absurd. It's very open to interpretation and people want a wide variety of things in supporting it.
You aren't helping any person by arguing in bad faith (ex. your other comment in this tree: "Do you think that black people's lives don't matter?"). In fact, you're turning away people who would otherwise be allies, and believe in the common cause of humanity, but will never go along with all the woke song and dance bullshit.
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Your comments sound a lot like religious zealotry.
Think about what you are suggesting:
"You are a racist if you don't support this particular organization"
Why would your reaction to the phrase "black lives matter," not be one of immediate support if you're not a racist? Do you think that black people's lives don't matter? This isn't a game of semantics or something that's up for "debate" (what is there to debate?): real people are being murdered.
It's religious semantics:
"[T]hird-wave antiracism is a profoundly religious movement in everything but terminology. The idea that whites are permanently stained by their white privilege, gaining moral absolution only by eternally attesting to it, is the third wave’s version of original sin. The idea of a someday when America will “come to terms with race” is as vaguely specified a guidepost as Judgment Day. Explorations as to whether an opinion is “problematic” are equivalent to explorations of that which may be blasphemous. The social mauling of the person with “problematic” thoughts parallels the excommunication of the heretic. What is called “virtue signaling,” then, channels the impulse that might lead a Christian to an aggressive display of her faith in Jesus."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/why-third-...
You just made my point with these types of absolutist statements. Thanks, saved me some keystrokes!