Sun, 22:03: Labeling Black Lives Matter “a hate group,” likening them to the KKK, is the height of false equivalency, jaw droppingly ignorant, incendiary, and racist. It sows the very division supposedly being lamented.
Seeing that kind of shit is truly dispiriting. Violence in protest is often counterproductive, particularly in the endeavor to gain public support. I get that. It’s also not any part of the BLM platform, nor are all violent protesters BLM members (or so-called “Antifa,” for that matter). But media outlets and knee-jerk meme sharers sure love to characterize them that way. BLM’s very specific mission is to intervene in acts of violence against Black communities by the state, that being the source of the movement—something far too many of the people talking about them conveniently fail to acknowledge.
There is tape on a window across the street from me, spelling “ACAB.” That actually bothers me too: even though I believe strongly that policing in America is long overdue for a massive structural overhaul, I still wouldn’t go around saying “all cops are bastards.” It’s a stupid, counterproductive oversimplification. I also understand why some people have reason to feel that way. (To be fair, I doubt the person in that particular apartment understands the irony of their own privilege.)
It’s called nuance, something we are rapidly losing in the face of social media, where instant gratification promotes a toxic environment of simplistic memes. I would sure love to see more people expressing how they feel in their own words, rather than in misleading and/or contextless sound bites in memes.
I don’t have any easy answers, and that is part of the problem: everyone is demanding easy answers where there are none. I do think that laying off the sharing of memes and posts with no sourcing is a good start, and I do my best to offer sources when it is clearly called for.
Otherwise, we’re all just drowning in our own bitterness and ignorance. And we’re all better off when everyone can actually breathe.
