Why BLM is Bad
Photo by: Lalesh Aldarwish
My friend Roger asks:
In this and other of your opinion pieces you assume good faith on the part of the reader. You write not to amplify or explain but to promote. You're a smart guy. What I want to know from you is what you contend and why. For example, I reject the BLM movement. You seem to also. Why? What constitutes the BLM movement to the extent that you and I and conservatives reject it. What is it that makes it inherently flawed. I'm not interested in doing good. I'm interested in knowing what is good.
First, I'm going to make an observation as a coach. If you are up to something in the world, you've got to start with your crew. My friend Roger always has insight that sharpens my thinking and makes me a better person. Whatever you want to do, whatever you are up to, your chances of success are just going to be that much better, if you surround yourself with the people who you want to be like and who will support you. It just works. Do it.
Now, I'm going to get to the substance. The question essentially is why does this whole Black Lives Matter movement bother us in our kishkes?
BLM looks to an answer outside of itself, and this is not the American way.
Let us say that the black community (and do not berate me for using this term; this is what the movement calls itself) is correct in its premise that black people suffer different treatment at the hands of the police. Let's take it one step further, that blacks are seen differently by a majority of whites and subject to different treatment as a result.
They are not special in this. Slavery and subjugation are a part of the human condition. From the moment he started to settle down, work fields, and build cities, man enslaved others to do his work. Every empire created was at the cost of other people, and most included a fair amount of death and persecution along the way.
Many came to America running from bad conditions somewhere else, whether famine, or religious persecution, or economic hardship. Some come searching for opportunity. Most who came of their own free will had to hustle to survive, whether breaking new ground and learning how to live in the new unknown environment, working in sweat shops, or company run towns stacked against them.
Many came after having lost everything. They struggled to make their way and work their way up. They didn't say you owe us. They didn't get special treatment. Chinese, Japanese, Jew, Irish, Catholic, Protestant all were subject to discrimination. Many groups were at one time or another restricted from various institutions and work places. The institutions of government weren't tasked to help them. Even the older, more assimilated of any group often looked down at the newer ones “making them look bad."
So what did they do? Hibernian Halls, German Clubs, Knights of Columbus, clubs of almost every ethnicity, churches, synagogues. They created their own colleges and country clubs. In short, they took care of their own, or they didn't.
BLM Demands a Different Narrative
But they didn't demand reform in the name of the group, directed specifically at that group, requiring the acceptance of a certain narrative of that group, casting that group as victims entitled to special consideration and treatment.
And there's the rub. Too many associated with BLM are offended when others are unwilling to adopt their version of the facts, and especially their conclusions about those facts.
Are blacks treated differently? Let's say the answer is yes. Are they treated differently by law enforcement? Let's assume that's also a yes. Now, is the cause institutional racism, or is the cause that blacks are over-represented in the criminal population? And what's the cause of that? Is it Whitey holding the Nigger down, or is it that the black population is not doing what's necessary to pull its own up? And what's the cause of that? Is it government policies that don't foster family and self-reliance, or is it something internal to the community? And is it so different for whites? As a monolith of black versus white, it might fall out that blacks are treated worse. Now what about the treatment of the criminal element in each population? What of the treatment of the non-criminal element?
BLM Already Knows
My problem with BLM is that it assumes answers to too many of these questions. For instance it assumes “constant exploitation and perpetual oppression,"and “sustained and increasingly visible violence against Black communities.” BLM Platform.
The movement knows: “that patriarchy, exploitative capitalism, militarism, and white supremacy know no borders. We stand in solidarity with our international family against the ravages of global capitalism and anti-Black racism, human-made climate change, war, and exploitation. We also stand with descendants of African people all over the world in an ongoing call and struggle for reparations for the historic and continuing harms of colonialism and slavery.”
In sum, the movement demands something of us, as oppressors. I am not allowed to ask whether the reparations shouldn't come from the blacks and muslims who sold the black slaves to the Portuguese in Africa. The movement assumes a patriarchy, and that that is wrong. It casts aspersions at capitalism and suggests that white supremacy raging on unfettered. I say all of these premises are subject to debate.
BLM is a Subversive Political Movement
Read about the movement: for an anti-capitalist, “radically transformed,…realignment of global power.” It is a political alignment of a distinctly non-American character. Read the Reparations Page. Calls are made for free education, for lifetime support, for Universal Basic Income arrangements, demanding Black History curricula.
BLM demands “We demand economic justice for all and a reconstruction of the economy to ensure Black communities have collective ownership, not merely access,” and “a radical and sustainable redistribution of wealth" BLM on Economic Justice.
And perhaps I'm only reading on the fringe. Judge for Yourself. There's a list of endorsing organizations. I've visited a few. Some are quite scary. Some want to show me how I'm a racist if I don't already know.
BLM Thinks I Should Die
But mostly, as a Jew, I am against BLM because it's against me. On BLM's A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom and Justice, I am referred to the National Jericho Movement. Go visit. You see:
Zionism must be confronted as a form of white supremacy that exists within our movements for liberation and social change.
Zionism has its main base of political, economic and military support in the “United States.”
Zionism [is] a central pillar of US imperialism.
As Malcolm X said, “Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.” True anti-Zionist principles must support the right of the Palestinian people to liberate their historic land by any means necessary.
Palestine Solidarity Principles of Unity.
In other words Zionism is racism. Zionism is an extension of European colonialism. Israel must be “decolonized.” How? By any means necessary.
Swapping Oppressors
So here's the thing: When you use your victimhood as an excuse to justify my destruction, I'm not interested. You're just trying to swap your form of oppression for the one you imagine already exists, in this case with principles grounded in communism, or socialism, at best, neither of which systems works.
What is Good?
But Roger asked what is good. What's good is knowing what's so. And, as Professor Fryer suggests, what's so is that we don't know much:
The importance of our results for racial inequality in America is unclear. It is plausible that racial differences in lower level uses of force are simply a distraction and movements such as Black Lives Matter should seek solutions within their own communities rather than changing the behaviors of police and other external forces.
… Black Dignity Matters.
What's good is to reject movements based on false beliefs that are trying to impose a particular world view on the rest of us. What's good is to bring to light the motivation and the direction of these movements, especially when they look like those failed political movements that have themselves brought so much pain and suffering to the world.
So what's good is to respect each individual, but to reject BLM.
