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Comment by monk_e_boy | Hacker News Reader

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There's a lot of ground between supporting black people and racial equality on the one hand, and the goals of BLM on the other. I'd hazard a guess that most Americans are in favor of the former and opposed to the latter.

If someone whom I regarded as a friend, or generally had a good opinion of, expressed that position, I would like them to explain to me what they regard as the significant differences between the two positions.

Just picking a quote from the sibling link:

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

I don't think this is entailed in the general idea of supporting black people and equal rights.

There are plenty of other goals on that page that are similarly not obviously entailed.

OK - I was wondering if there was anything substantial here, but so far it just seems to be further examples of the overblown rhetoric that seems to be everywhere these days.

Personally, I would doubt whether many of the people endorsing the position that black lives matter are even aware that an entity controlling this domain name is stating these positions, let alone that they concur with all of them.

I was reading this thread, and that exact paragraph from the BLM website popped into my mind right before you provided it as an example.

May I seek rather to understand than to be understood says a well-known prayer. I believe the right thing to do is actively probe others’ opinions and points of view to make sure I understand them. If more people placed the burden of understanding on themselves and not the other then I suspect we would not be in this position right now.

As for me, I believe the right thing to to is to not choke to death someone who is already beyond posing any sort of threat. If we had less of that then I suspect we would not be in this position right now.

What are BLM's goals?

Not sure this is authoritative, but seems plausible:

https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/

It's not very well formatted, but you can skip about half-way down and look for text that seems like a list.

> I lose a bunch every election. Selfish right wing friends get removed.

You didn't "lose" (passive voice) friends, you actively decided to not be friends with them. That's on you, not them.

> I don't know how people can be anti-BLM .... How can I be friends with them?

You could try to understand why they express the views that they do. Presumably they aren't full of hatred, or you probably wouldn't be friends in the first place, which means they probably have a reasonable view, even if you disagree. The more your friends have to agree with you on everything to be friends, the fewer friends you'll have. Personally I think that shared interests and values and ability to have healthy conflict are more important than agreement. Plus, you'll grow more as a person if you don't live in an echo chamber.

What does anti-BLM mean to you?

To me: pro-status-quo, in particular with regards to policy changes that increase racial equity.

Edit: "racial justice" would have been a better choice than "equity".

Seems reasonable enough, but you might be falling for the old fallacy that doing something is always better than doing nothing. It's an easy sales pitch but it's not actually a valid argument.

Using #DefundThePolice as an example... it seems obvious that something needs done but https://blacklivesmatter.com/defundthepolice/ doesn't make a convincing case about. There are a lot of people who are opposed to the status quo but don't see much value in that particular hashtag. Does that seem anti-BLM to you?

equity !== equality

Equity means striving for an impossible, ever moving goalpost that will lead to oppression of many over time.

Equality of opportunity may not overcome the starting point, but doesn't seek to raise some and oppress others for actions that they didn't create.

Nobody should have to suffer, apologize or have their actions dismissed because of how they were born. We are all raised in different environments and all have to make our own decisions in life.

Our best option is to spread knowledge and points of ethical example.

People should read both MLK and Malcom-X and consider them before trying to raise a PoV about status quo vs change that may actually be worse for everyone. I'm not entirely in favor of the status quo, but that doesn't mean that changes proposed have any more value in terms of improving society as a whole.

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