#BlackLivesMatter was born three years ago after the murder trial of George Zimmerman, the man who shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman was found not guilty.
Similar hashtags are competing for prominence, such as #AllLivesMatter.
But the original movement is getting renewed attention with the police killings of two black men in early July: 37-year-old Alton Sterling in Louisiana and 32-year-old Philando Castile in Minnesota.
Those shootings, within a day of each other, were followed by the murders of five Dallas police officers. The officers, all of them white, were ambushed at a “black lives matter” rally.
Tallahassee criminal defense attorney Chuck Hobbs writes about race and other topics for websites like The Hill and The Grio. Lately he’s been writing a lot about why black lives should be singled out in a hashtag.
"In the criminal justice system, black lives are not treated with the same sense of respect or judiciousness that other lives are, and I think it's important to distinguish that by saying black lives matter," Hobbs says. "Those of us who support that ideology cannot say other lives don't matter. Implicit within that I would say is all lives matter."
Hobbs spoke with WLRN's Gina Jordan from his Tallahassee office.
WLRN: You've called out the media for spreading widely believed assumptions - that black people are prone to crime and that they don't do anything to address crime rates in black neighborhoods. How is the media getting this wrong?
HOBBS: When you have individuals who make the decisions in newsrooms as to what stories are to be shown, that's where it starts. I think it's more of a cultural insensitivity that happens when you don't have a number of African-Americans or Latino Americans or transgender, gays and lesbians in the newsrooms.
If you've got majority older white guys or middle aged white guys or white women who see things through their lenses, it's very difficult to think to yourself - have we ever wondered why, when the boy is charged with rape, we get a picture of him in his graduation photo with a shirt and tie when on the flip side you get a picture of a victim of police murder in a mug shot?
WLRN: The Dallas police chief is asking young black men to be part of the solution by applying to be police officers in their communities. Is that a movement you support?
HOBBS: I support it. My dad was a law enforcement officer. I'm a former prosecutor myself, so I work with officers on a day-to-day basis. I think that it is important to have all races within law enforcement because it just brings a different set of life's experiences to the table.
I'm a big believer in community policing. There was a time when law enforcement officers lived in the community they protected or they walked the beat. Everybody respected whoever the officer was. I think to a great extent those programs are important more than ever nowadays whereby people in all neighborhoods are familiar, so when this officer rolls up… people will know, OK, that's a good guy or a good woman there. I think that's important. We just don't know each other as well as we used to.
WLRN: What, ultimately, do you think is at the heart of the violence that’s happened in the last couple of weeks?
HOBBS: I think it’s fear. I think that most blacks including me understand that officers have a very difficult job…They've got young men who have no respect for the badge who raise all sorts of hell with them, are willing to fight and do whatever it takes. So I think that to a great extent many of [the officers] suffer from some form of post-traumatic stress.
Click below to hear more of the interview.
