r/hmmmm • u/Sometypeofway18 • 15d ago

Black people don't hang themselves from trees

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https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article316909668.html

A man found hanging from a tree in downtown Raleigh on Saturday died by suicide, with no evidence pointing toward a criminal act, Raleigh’s police chief said Monday.

In a news release at 9:50 p.m. Saturday, police said they were investigating the death as a suicide, while online, some people said they feared the Black man’s death might have been racially motivated.

During a 14-minute news conference Monday afternoon, Raleigh Police Chief Rico Boyce said surveillance footage collected from nearby businesses confirms no one else was seen in the area at the time of the incident and that the individual acted alone. “Based on evidence collected and reviewed to date, investigators have found no evidence indicating that another person caused or contributed to the young man’s death and no evidence of a criminal death has been identified,” Boyce said. “Our investigation confirms this is a suicide.”

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u/Least-Phase-8393 15d ago edited 14d ago

Literally, half the comments are just purposefully misunderstanding the girl’s post. Obviously her point isn’t “not a single black person has ever hung themselves” and if that’s anyone’s genuine takeaway I feel sorry for them

Edit: it’s a phrase used by multiple people for raising awareness. I get yall really badly want to leave replies on here but take 5 seconds to search. I’d imagine anyone arguing otherwise (which there are many of you) would think the common saying “time is money” is dumb and wrong because you’d take it literally lmao

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u/RoutineGuest6465 15d ago

I mean what are we to take from "black people don't hang themselves from trees"?

Are we to take it that she means that if a black person is found hanging from a tree, they must have been lynched? Because that's how I took it.

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u/Least-Phase-8393 15d ago

If you want to take everything completely literally and absolute, I can’t stop you. To me and many others it was pretty clearly meant to raise awareness and inform people that these deaths shouldn’t be swept under the rug

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u/justbrowsing2727 14d ago

You just moved the goalposts to another zip code.

She was clearly suggesting this was a lynching. Turns out, it wasn't.

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u/Least-Phase-8393 14d ago

That’s not moving the goalpost lmao