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Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

> Many of the victims from the area, also called Black Wall Street, are thought to have been buried in mass graves, but there are few recordds that exist from the massacre or the burials.

Just in case your first exposure was from a different source, people started saying "black lives matter" because of the instances where people acted callously or apathetic towards the lives of black people, and the centuries of history in the Americas that are congruent with and reinforce that reality continuing now.

It has since been assigned to a faction and movement that has very little to do with the point of why people are saying it.

Hope that helps someone! There are a lot of people that think this came out of the blue and interpret the chants as an impending pogrom putting some people's lives above others, but that is a distortion that is furthest from the truth.

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> There are a lot of people that think this came out of the blue and interpret the chants as an impending pogrom putting some people's lives above others, but that is a distortion that is furthest from the truth.

Indeed. There's a lot of knee-jerk reaction against Black Lives Matter, and an eagerness to establish who the leaders are so it and everyone involved can be discredited. However, it's not an organization, it's a movement. Do you think the lives of black people matter? Then you're part of Black Lives Matter.

And, it is important to note, saying "black lives matter" emphatically does NOT mean that you think that non-black lives don't matter. But the sad fact of the matter is that historically black lives have often not mattered as much as non-black lives, and sometimes (perhaps even often) still don't even today. That's the reason for the emphasis being placed where it is.

In the US*.

And the rest of the world, where colonialist policies have left a historical legacy of disenfranchisement among less-favored groups, often along color lines.

Not just in the US:

https://www.creosotemaps.com/blm2020/

Palestinian lives also matter.

> Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada,

From their website: https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/

Just because someone registers a website, doesn't mean they own the movement.

Ok, there is an organization (several actually, including at least one huge scam https://mobile.twitter.com/bri_sacks/status/1272624867905425... ). But they are not the most interesting part of the movement.

> Do you think the lives of black people matter? Then you're part of Black Lives Matter.

Do you think it's okay to be white? Then you are a white nationalist, too [0].

Basically you are insisting that we should interpret the movement at the face-value of its name, and that's it. Are you willing to apply the same standards to other movements? Do "All Lives Matter"? Do "Blue Lives Matter"?

[0] https://www.thefire.org/ohio-universities-involve-fbi-in-inv...

Perhaps you're getting down voted for pointing out that the BLM organization is different than the sentiment that yes, black lives matter. I've found you can't criticize the BLM organization or else it's equated that you think black lives do not matter.

Exactly. It’s an organization with a website, a donation page, and a published set of beliefs on that website, but I can’t seem to say anything about it that isn’t emphatic agreement without getting back loaded questions about how how racist I might be. When Fortune 500 companies are donating to the cause and its brand imagery is showing up everywhere from video games to github, then we have a right to critique it without fearing social ostracism.

"I've found you can't criticize the BLM organization or else it's equated that you think black lives do not matter"

I think that's by design.

> I think that's by design.

Which way do you mean this? I can interpret that in a few different ways

There were a lot of people during the civil rights era who were upset that they couldn't criticize Martin Luther King or it would be equated as being against equal rights.

Maybe the problem is that you're overly concerned with how you can safely criticize the movement. Do you personally think black lives matter? Have you spent as much time criticizing the problems that created the movement as you have spent criticizing the movement itself?

Yet it's a valid criticism.

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