Ask HN: Was Mark Zuckerberg wrong to call All Lives Matter employees malicious?
I'm posting this from a throwaway account because of the stigma and taboo of having non-mainstream opinions toward sensitive topics like diversity. Obviously I agree that many aspects of diversity are underrepresented in the tech world: diversity by race, gender, age, culture, and even geography.
Given his position, Zuck's response is understandable, but at the same time I find it distasteful to refer to employees writing "All Lives Matter" as "malicious". What they are saying is valid and accurate. I do not see it as insulting at all, but rather a broadening of the statement to be fully encompassing and supporting of all people (isn't that what embracing diversity is really about?!).
It's hard to understand being lashed out against for arguing that all people matter equally.
For context, see this recent post:
"Zuckerberg Asks Employees to Stop Crossing Out “Black Lives Matter” at FB HQ (techcrunch.com)"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11176467
16 comments
[ 6.5 ms ] story [ 577 ms ] thread"Embracing racial diversity" means that you acknowledge that racism and segregation is still very prevalent in the united states and all over the world. "Black Lives Matter" attempts to raise awareness of this situation and bring justice to shitty cops.
edit: and next time you decide to post some bullshit like this don't do it under a throwaway account, pussy
Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News, regardless of how wrong you think someone is.
That said -- "malicious" might not have been the best word for him to use. Even though one is offended by (otherwise sees harm in) the actions of others, one shouldn't always presume malice. You do have a point there.
But otherwise -- and more importantly -- look, you need to realize that, basically the ALM movement is pretty darn insensitive and clueless. The main reason people take offense at the ALM slogan is that it seems belittling of the (very serious, and more to the point, seriously unequal) threats to their physical safety that blacks (and other minority groups) have to deal with on a daily basis.
As the other poster so eloquently put it -- yes, some people do have more right to complain. It's just the way the world is, at present. If you don't like this state of affairs... either (1) try to do something about the underlying phenomena which causes these people to complain more in the first place, or (2) at least lift your head up, and recognize that however imperfectly stated, their complaints are not about you, and as such, in no way meant to be something you should get offended about.
So in sum, yes, the ALM slogan isn't necessarily malicious, per se. But it is clueless and juvenile.
Do you have proof of this? The few cases we see in the media nearly all involved criminals fighting or antagonizing the police.
I have yet to see a case where a minority was minding their own business and the cops came and decided to shoot them dead.
The real issue is minority -> minority homicide rates. It's astronomical compared to pretty much any other statistic. Yet, it's not hip or cool to talk about.
The main problem I see is that all of these groups are separating us even more by race, to gain power.
Just look at all of these groups on college campuses that only allow minorities to participate (whites need not apply).
It's the exact same type of racist bullshit that happened during the 50s and 60s in this country, but because the shoe is on the other foot, it's somehow justified.
All lives do matter. Until we can accept this, we will never have equality.
What usually happens is they see some guy minding his own business. And then panic because he's, you know, black.
And scribbling over it is just inflammatory and childish.
Unfortunately, this happened in my city (Cincinnati, Ohio) last year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Samuel_DuBose
It resulted in The University of Cincinnati's Police Department being disbanded and replaced by longstanding and experienced leadership from the City of Cincinnati Police Department.
I parsed it as being about crossing out a message, not about writing another one. Not "you are malicious because you write a broader statement/remind people of a more encompassing position", but "you are malicious because you crossed out others speech, after we've told you we consider that as silencing others and that is not OK". There is a difference there, and it is quite carefully worded to limit the scope. (really, better than anything I would have expected from Facebook)
Now, I have no clue how the general conduct regarding those walls is and what happened before Zuckerberg's message, so it's hard to put it into precise context.
Black Lives Matter is saying something else, however. In practice, out on the street, blacks are dying far more frequently than whites. While we can argue about the causes of that[1], there is still a problem that is worth calling attention to. Replying that "all lives matter" is true, but is also diverting attention from the horrific body count, which makes it somewhat less likely that anything useful will be done.
[1] I have heard that, if you adjust for severity of the interaction with the police, blacks are shot less frequently per severe encounter. ("Severity" means "a murder bust is more likely to go bad than a traffic ticket".) I cannot cite a reference for this at the moment, however.
This sounds like another way of arguing that racial profiling is real.
The problem is that the statement “I should get my fair share” had an implicit “too” at the end: “I should get my fair share, too, just like everyone else.” But your dad’s response treated your statement as though you meant “only I should get my fair share”, which clearly was not your intention. As a result, his statement that “everyone should get their fair share,” while true, only served to ignore the problem you were trying to point out.
That’s the situation of the “black lives matter” movement. Culture, laws, the arts, religion, and everyone else repeatedly suggest that all lives should matter. Clearly, that message already abounds in our society.
The problem is that, in practice, the world doesn’t work that way. You see the film Nightcrawler? You know the part where Renee Russo tells Jake Gyllenhal that she doesn’t want footage of a black or latino person dying, she wants news stories about affluent white people being killed? That’s not made up out of whole cloth — there is a news bias toward stories that the majority of the audience (who are white) can identify with. So when a young black man gets killed (prior to the recent police shootings), it’s generally not considered “news”, while a middle-aged white woman being killed is treated as news. And to a large degree, that is accurate — young black men are killed in significantly disproportionate numbers, which is why we don’t treat it as anything new. But the result is that, societally, we don’t pay as much attention to certain people’s deaths as we do to others. So, currently, we don’t treat all lives as though they matter equally.
Just like asking dad for your fair share, the phrase “black lives matter” also has an implicit “too” at the end: it’s saying that black lives should also matter. But responding to this by saying “all lives matter” is willfully going back to ignoring the problem. It’s a way of dismissing the statement by falsely suggesting that it means “only black lives matter,” when that is obviously not the case. And so saying “all lives matter” as a direct response to “black lives matter” is essentially saying that we should just go back to ignoring the problem.
From https://np.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3du1qm/el...
It's "blacklivesmatter" not "onlyblacklivesmatter", I don't know why people keep interpreting it as the latter. "blacklivesmatter" doesn't imply that all lives don't.