I recently passed a link in a DM to a now-former friend which included an unrelated pro-BLM ad banner at the top of the page. They took one look at that page, saw the BLM message, emoted flipping a table, and told me they’re not looking at anything else on the page.
Is it fair to call that person an unapologetic racist based on that?
Other relevant background, I knew they were a Trump fan since before the election. They refused to engage me when I wanted to discuss the events of January 6th, finding it too upsetting to talk about. Here’s the page I tried to show them, because I wanted their opinion on the unorthodox math presented. That BLM banner had been on every page for months and I’d forgotten it was there.
After I got that response, I said nothing back to the person and I’ve broken off all contact. Their earlier reluctance to discuss Jan 6th and now this tells me they want to hide in their bubble forever, and now I’m strongly inclined to let them.
I would have said “brainwashed” rather than ignorant, but yeah.
As with people who irrationally despise President Obama, I imagine that anyone who has a visceral negative reaction to the words “Black Lives Matter” is either racist themselves, or has been listening to racists and bought into their lies, or has been influenced by the smear tactics that exploit racism for political advantage.
When I see references to BLM, it is evidence that the rest of the site will be less informative than otherwise, because BLM is not an informative slogan. Likewise, the outright dismissal of a whole site due to this, rather than simply being a factor, is evidence that the person is more racist than otherwise, but is not proof itself, which would be supported by other things like being a Trump supporter who cannot come out against the Jan 6th attack.
if a person thinks racism Against blacks doesn’t exist, but thinks whites and Christians are a persecuted minority then that’s a pretty big sign of white entitlement.
I was not referencing XKCD. I was talking in general. And it depends on how much real estate they dedicate to it, in XKCD’s case, a small amount. It doesn’t retroactively make the site less informative since I already have read a huge chunk of the strips.
However, if I saw a new site with BLM plastered all over, I would wonder if it would spend a lot of energy trying to tell me things I’ve known about for decades.
Yes, someone who thinks black lives don’t matter is definitely a racist. “Black lives matter” is about the weakest possible anti-racist statement that one could come up with, and it’s truly pathetic that we as a nation can’t even agree on that much.
2021/09/02 23:48:30 Me: you might find these useful https://xkcd.com/2509/
2021/09/02 23:49:27 Them: ah it has black lives matter
2021/09/02 23:49:28 Them: flips table
2021/09/02 23:49:47 Them: yeah not looking at that
2021/09/02 23:52:58 Them: i should write to the page owner
After the 3rd message I’d decided to make no response to them at all. The 4th one tempted me strongly to make some nasty joke but I’m pretty sure they’ll never actually bother contacting the page owner. I stuck to my earlier decision of making no response at all and just unfriended and blocked them.
There’s always a big difference between supporting (or opposing) something in concept or theory, and supporting (or opposing) an actual organization, cause, or movement that is related to that issue.
Think of it as abstract vs. concrete. In abstract, something tends to be clean and tidy. In concrete, it tends to be far messier - a cause or organization may be corrupt, support things that are tangential or unrelated, use flawed arguments, its leader may have scandals, etc.
But BLM is the former, not the latter. There is no “President of BLM”. You can’t be a “member of BLM”. You can’t be “kicked out of BLM for not following their bylaws”. It’s a simple question: Do black lives matter? If you answer yes, then you’re “part of BLM”. If you answer no, then you’re part of BLDM.
It’s confusing, and ambiguous. I think that the right-wing, Trumper, Fox-news-watching types think that “Black Lives Matter” is a particular, scary organization—like the dreaded Antifa.
Sure, but that’s like asking “Do you want to make America great again?” I’m sure most of us would agree that America could improve a lot or strengthen itself in many ways. But that doesn’t mean we support Trump or the GOP. Because MAGA, as a cause (decentralized, no bylaws, no formal organization), entails a great deal of nasty baggage that has nothing to do with making America actually great.
The first being the most obvious, that it was a specific campaign slogan for a specific candidate. It was not a statement that existed outside of that context.
There’s also the matter of the “again” part, which asks the question, when was it that America was great that you want to go back to, and was that great for everyone?
Black Lives Matter is simple a statement of fact, that you either agree with, or you disagree with.
It’s not that simple. Taking groups such as BLM at the most literal is like taking antifa as literal. These are labels and nothing more and what those who act in the name of those labels aren’t necessarily acting in the literal meaning of those labels. It’s similar to any country that starts with the words Democratic People’s Republic… It’s sort of a clue that the country isn’t run that way but wants the legitimacy conveyed by the literal meaning of the label.
So yes a simple statement like black lives matter ought to be uncontroversial but an organization that exploits the emotional resonance of that statement in order to enact a marxist agenda can be rejected without any issue whatsoever.
But people who say “Black Lives Matter”, or put up signs saying that, or whatever, usually aren’t a member of any particular organization. Nobody owns a trademark on BLM or Black Lives Matter (unlike MAGA, incidentally).