
Ask HN: How one can disagree with BLM organisation? - tomtompl
BLM on its pages has a lot of stances that one can disagree with. 
But because of its name, it&#x27;s pretty much impossible to state the disagreement without being called racist.<p>How can we overcome that?
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blacklivesmatter.com&#x2F;what-we-believe&#x2F;
======
kinghtown
Why do you need to disagree with BLM? The defunding the police stuff is
impossible and stupid (though reform is necessary ASAP) but it’s clear to me,
as a white guy, that 1. Black lives are worth protecting and 2. My life as a
white guy will be better if black people were treated with dignity and respect
at an institutional level. 3. BLM is the movement going forward from here so
why not support it?

If you think that your life will be worse if the demands or whatever of BLM
are met then you really need to be honest with yourself and others about who
you are.

~~~
tomtompl
For one thing I don't believe disrupting nuclear family model is a thing that
will do any good, ironically especially for black families.

It is possible I am wrong, but as much as I informed myself, for this moment,
my opinion is just different from the one proposed by BLM.

> If you think that your life will be worse if the demands or whatever of BLM
> are met then you really need to be honest with yourself and others about who
> you are.

And that is what I am talking about. It seems to me that you think that all
BLM demands are universally good - and if I don't fully agree with them I must
be somehow a bad person. I refuse to believe that they have monopoly for
morality and truth.

~~~
kinghtown
If the nuclear family model were sustainable and prone to growth then how did
we get here?

Middle-class is an important economic segment of the population but it really
seems like protecting the middle class was always more important than growing
the middle class.

Economics and statistics are hard and I’m forgiving for the protestors making
some illogical demands which may feel right but would have unforeseen
consequences. But there must be a compromise here. We all can’t just continue
to pretend that things are great and BLM wants to disrupt that just cause.

I’m almost 40 and progress has been agonizingly slow. I argue that the
counterpoints which I hear or read against BLM are really just good old
fashioned conservatism masquerading as logical rigour.

------
Findeton
Controversial opinion here: you can't. If you do, you'll just lose. The
movement is based on being offended, on feelings and identity politics, not
reason. I event doubt to write this because I'll probably be called names
instead of being reasoned with.

~~~
dangus
Can you give us some concrete examples of this movement being based on “being
offended, on feelings and identity politics?” What about this movement,
_specifically_ , seems wrong to you?

Throwing negative labels like “identity politics“ around kind of denies that
the whole problem is that we as a nation are treating one set of people
unfairly because of their identity. So yes, it’s “identity politics.”

I hope I come across as reasoning. I’m not going to throw names your way. As
respectfully as I can be toward you and your ideas, I am not seeing a lot of
substance to your argument. The argument seems “controversial opinion here, I
don’t like this, and I won’t explain why.”

~~~
Findeton
It is identity politics when a set of people asks for privileges based on the
colour of their skin. It wasn't so long ago that the civil rights movement
wanted to abolish classification based on race, now they demand it so that
their race gets more privileges, in a sort of pay back. Now you have people
behind these identity-based movements demanding things like quotas, X% of
people at Big Corp. should be black, Y% should be women, a co-founder of
Reddit resigns from board so that a black person replaces him. Qualifications
needed: colour of their skin?

There will be no end to these problems until we recognise the problem is not
in the colour of the skin. It's not one set of people, it's not even multiple
sets of people (women/black people/latinos), it's not about heterogeneous sets
of people (mixed-race). The problem is only within individuals, and their
individual actions. If a black person kills another black person, that's bad.
If a white person kills a black person, that's also bad. If a man kills a
woman, that's bad. If a woman kills a man, that's bad. It looks like this is a
difficult thing to accept nowadays.

Also I'm sorry if I haven't addressed all your points, I'm afraid I am busy
and didn't have more time to develop this comment further.

------
dangus
Why are you looking to “overcome” an organization you don’t agree with?

I can’t stop the Federalist Society from existing just because I disagree with
their views.

From what I can tell, BLM is doing nothing illegal: it’s not encouraging or
hate or violence.

Personally, I don’t see anything extreme about the “what we believe” page. I
would agree with most if not all of it. If you don’t like that, and if you
don’t like that, legitimately, a lot of people actually do agree with those
beliefs, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Pieces of advice from me:

1\. If you are going to point out that the BLM organization is unfavorable to
you, you should clearly separate the organization from the phrase. Black lives
do indeed matter and many people who use the phrase aren’t necessarily part of
the organization. I hope that idea is rather obvious. You can’t change the
fact that this organization’s name and branding is extremely effective like
that.

2\. Have well-informed reasons on why the organization itself is problematic.
This post in particular doesn’t have any information besides a link and a
statement that you don’t like it. So what exactly has the organization done
wrong in your view? Are they corrupt or shady in some way or do you just
disagree with their ideals? If you are well reasoned _and empathetic_ you
won’t be accused of being racist. If you’re being contrarian just because
something makes you uncomfortable that’s a sign that maybe your own argument
is mostly based on bias.

3\. Evaluate if it’s even worth your time and energy just to disagree with
someone else. What does that get you? Meeting on common ground is how people
communicate successfully, nobody got anywhere by telling the other person
they’re wrong.

4\. I would encourage you to re-evaluate what freedom and liberty mean to you
if your aim is to defeat other people’s ideologies for the sake of dislike or
disagreement alone. People have the right to believe in the ideology of the
BLM organization.

~~~
tomtompl
Sorry, I never said I want to "overcome" an organization. English is not my
first language and if it sounded that way - it wasn't meant to.

What I think is worth 'overcoming' is a sentiment that if one disagrees with
the goals of blacklivesmatter organisation it shouldn't mean he/she is racist,
insensitive etc.

I work for a company from USA and I have been 'outed' for not sharing black
lives matter hashtag and whatnot, I don't feel I can safely say that I
disagree with some points - I talked to handful of people privately and I met
with literal outrage. I think this is really problematic.

~~~
dangus
Perhaps that’s because all the points on the “what we believe” page are about
inclusion, community, and equal treatment.

Truthfully, I don’t spot any logical way to disagree with those stated views
without the reasoning being “I don’t like that kind of person.”

I can only assume that you did a lot more than “not sharing” at work. In fact
you said so - you went out of your way to talk to people in private just to
disagree. People don’t like that kind of thing, doesn’t matter what the
subject matter is.

------
Ghjklov
Why not just go with the flow? Who knows, maybe you might enjoy a racialist
society where everything is decided on the whim of the trending minority
group. I'm not white, so it's kind of funny seeing white people kiss or clean
the feet of black people because they're guilty of another person's injustice
done onto someone else other than the ones having their feet worshipped.

~~~
tomtompl
Because it's simply counterproductive and one can make a good case it's
actually racist :|

