On Friday, the Southern Poverty Law Center made waves in the social media pool when it announced that, beginning in February, "White Lives Matter" will be listed among the nearly 900 hundred Hate Groups currently operating throughout the United States.
If you'll recall, White Lives Matter is the loose-knit group seemingly created for the sole purpose of countering the Black Lives Matter campaign - a movement that began in 2012 following the shooting death of Florida teen, Trayvon Martin, that seeks to bring attention to the disproportionate killing of Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement officers, and combat the enduring effects of systemic racism. Carrying weapons and replicas of the Confederate flag, members of White Lives Matter recently protested in front of NAACP offices in Houston.
The group's designation on the Law Center's "Hate Map" comes on the heels of a report released by the SPLC that suggests that Rebecca Barnette, a woman from Tennessee and the likely leader of White Lives Matter, is also vice president of the women's chapter of the Aryan Strikeforce.
But while most recognize "White Lives Matter" as a thin-veil covering horrid, racist ideologies, many (too many) insist that a double-standard for critique exists. While I don't have proof to support my claim, I imagine that they are the same people who, in 2016, still can't fathom why "White Entertainment Television ("WET")" doesn't exist, or why "White History Month" hasn't found its place on American calendars. With confidence, they issue the juvenile rebuttal "If WLM is a "hate group," BLM is a hate group, too."
Au contraire.
Once and for all: White Lives Matter is a hate group, Black Lives Matter is not, and it's not a double-standard, so hush.
BLM Fights Oppression; WLM Fights Progress
To understand just why these groups are dissimilar, we really don't have to look any further than their respective origins. As was previously mentioned, Black Lives Matter was founded in 2012 by community activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi in response to the killing of Trayvon Martin - a 17-year-old whose life was taken by vigilante killer, George Zimmerman. In the aftermath of his death, Martin was posthumously put on trial in the court of public opinion; his entire life was inspected with a fine-tooth comb, and, in this bizarre courtroom, the burden of proof was on Martin to show that he didn't deserve to be murdered. With this scene as the backdrop, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was born, and the social justice movement served as his advocate.
Since then, Black Lives Matter has been instrumental in raising public awareness surrounding the extrajudicial killings of Black Americans. It's largely why we know the names of Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, and others, and why we as a country have begun to better collect data reflecting the disparate impact of police violence on black people and minority groups in the United States at-large. In fact, the early efforts of Black Lives Matter arguably inspired the federal government to address the problem, when, in 2015, the Department of Justice announced it would award over $23 million in funding to agencies across the country to expand the use of body-worn cameras on officers. The benefit of these efforts obviously aren't exclusive to black people. See, at no point did Black Lives Matter say that only black lives mattered, only that #blacklivesmatter, too. Its creation has helped change the way we view policing in America for the better, and as an organization, Black Lives Matter seeks to ensure social parity - not racial superiority.
"White Lives Matter isn't so much an independent hate group as it is a part-time hub for avowed racists to congregate."
In contrast, White Lives Matter exists only to counter the BLM movement. The first mention of the phrase came only after Black Lives Matter was established. Going beyond the limits of the "All Lives Matter" crowd, WLM has at its helm avowed white-supremacist, Rebecca Barnette - a 40-year-old Tennessean who leads a racist skinhead group. According to the SPLC, Barnette describes herself as a "revolutionist" who seeks to "create a new world" for white people. A quick browse of the White Lives Matter website unveils the unrepentant use of ethnic slurs and a lengthy, hateful narrative. In short, White Lives Matter isn't driven to enact positive social change. At its core, it's little more than a vehicle for dangerous, hateful rhetoric.
But for the sake of forced objectivity, let's assume that White Lives Matter has only the same key goal as the Black Lives Matter movement, that is, to end the stereotyping amongst some law enforcement officers that has led to the often unnecessary and disproportionate killing of far too many Black Americans. Would data support those goals for the WLM crowd?
Hardly.
In fact, white Americans are 2.5 times less likely to be killed by police when you adjust for population. Yes, while it is true that more white people are killed by police each year, it's only because there are nearly 160 million more white people in the U.S.
No, instead the motivation for the White Lives Matter movement stems from many of the same beliefs held by contemporaneous, bona-fide hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. To their disciples, they teach that "The fiber and integrity our nation was founded on is being unraveled ... [by] homosexuality and mix[ed] relationships," while at the same time espousing xenophobia and anti-government sentiments. White Lives Matter isn't so much an independent hate group as it is a part-time hub for avowed racists to congregate. All the same, members of the group hold beliefs of white supremacy and violence.
So, no, Black Lives Matter is not a hate group. It's a group designed to change the way we police marginalized communities in America. White Americans aren't routinely written-off as "thugs" when they're killed by police, nor are they disproportionately incarcerated in our nation's prisons. On the other hand, the tenets of White Lives Matter sound eerily similar to every other white supremacist group in existence. It's likely because they share the same members.
At this point, the difference between the two groups is evident.