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Black Lives Matter and “The Nuclear Family Structure”
Conservatives, Stop Quoting the BLM Platform Out of Context.
Okay so real quick, I need to just sort out one quick thing.
In my role as a bridge-building person, I’ve been seeing this question or challenge pop up more and more frequently by white and/or conservative people who have issue with Black Lives Matter. It’s usually on social media or in comment sections, where I don’t usually the bandwidth to respond individually, so most recently I’ve resorted to sending people links to my latest hip-hop rebuttal and moving on. Nevertheless, I recently had a white guy with a conservative Christian background bring this up to me in person, so that tells it’s not going away anytime soon.
I’ve written much more extensively on the ways in which it’s important to separate the movement or the concept of #BlackLivesMatter from the actual Black Lives Matter organization, so I’m not going to retread that ground here.
However, I’ve noticed that, in an attempt to discredit the broader #BlackLivesMatter movement (which I will heretofore distinguish by using the hashtag version of the slogan), a lot of white conservatives have taken to attacking the “radical leftist agenda” of the Black Lives Matter organization, founded by three self-described “radical Black organizers,” whose website can be reached at BlackLivesMatter.com.
In particular, I keep seeing one small quote, that keeps getting taken out of context, which is often cited as proof — proof, I say!! — that Black Lives Matter is not to be trusted:
“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure”
“Aha!” I’ve heard these white guys triumphantly exclaim (it’s often men, though not exclusively). “See? They don’t believe in the nuclear family structure! That’s anti-Christian, and un-American!”
Let’s break this down a bit, shall we?
What Black Lives Matter believes
