Black Lives Matter: Most Controversial Quotes And Statements

Black Lives Matter (BLM) was founded in 2012 by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, for what the organization terms as "the validity of Black life." It is also sometimes called an ideological reincarnation of the Black Panther movement that flourished in the '60s.

BLM was created in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who murdered and manslaughtered a 17-year-old boy called Trayvon Martin. According to BLM, Zimmerman committed the crime as a result of the "virulent anti-Black racism" that "permeates our society" and continues to magnify "the deep psychological wounds of slavery, racism and structural oppression."

BLM has faced criticism over the years for its controversial statements and quotes. Here are some of them:

DeRay Mckesson, a Black Lives Matter leader, was under fire in May 2015 for his controversial tweets about the police.

McKesson had criticized former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who called the Black Lives Matter movement racist. McKesson said that the police were "engaged in ethnic cleansing" in one of his tweets.

Yusra Khogali, Black Lives Matter Toronto co-founder, had faced criticism over a tweet from April 2016. However, she had reportedly deleted the post as soon as people started re-tweeting it.

She also came under the scanner Monday after a Facebook post she wrote late 2015 came up amid comments on her recent statements at a protest last week in front of the U.S. consulate in Toronto. During the protest, she was heard shouting slogans like "Justin Trudeau is a white supremacist terrorist" and encouraged the crowd to "rise up and fight back."

In her 2015 post, she had called white people "sub-humxn" and said they suffered from "recessive genetic defects."

Garza, the group's co-founder, in reference to Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address, wrote on the BLM website: "I waited for him to discuss or even announce a plan to address the needs of black people in America—especially black cisgender and transgender women and black immigrant women, who continue to be overlooked, underpaid, undervalued and in the midst of continual attacks on our lives.

I was deeply disappointed, and, unfortunately, not surprised. There was no tribute for India Clarke, a black trans woman, who was killed in Florida last year. There were no condolences to Samaria Rice, who is still fighting for justice for her 12-year-old son Tamir Rice. There was no mention of the fates of Laquan McDonald, Sandra Bland, Natasha McKenna, Samuel DuBose or Eric Garner."