Black Lives Matter Falls from Grace
– By Howard Sierer –
Do black lives matter or do all lives matter?
This blatantly racist question became a political hot button in 2015 after Sen. Bernie Sanders was booed and jeered by a crowd in Phoenix and shoved off a stage in Seattle for saying “all lives matter.” While Sanders’ answer should be obvious to anyone, five of six Democratic presidential contenders, including Sanders, subsequently answered the question in the politically correct manner of the times: black lives matter.
The then-recent killing of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, MO, sparked racial tension, riots and looting across the country. The previously obscure Black Lives Matter organization found its voice by encouraging and applauding the violence.
Democrats saw an opportunity to mobilize not only their black and liberal constituents but a large swath of voters in the middle who deplored what was portrayed in the liberal media as systemic police racism and by extension, the racist underpinning of American society in general.
The Michael Brown narrative that BLM and Democratic politicians touted turned out to be completely false. The police officer involved was investigated by the local prosecutor, by a St. Louis County grand jury, by the St. Louis district attorney and by Pres. Obama’s Department of Justice. All found that the officer acted in self-defense when Brown charged him.
The wheels of justice turn slowly: months passed between the initial accusations and the officer’s eventual exoneration. The liberal media that had whipped up a frenzy against supposed police brutality relegated the exoneration story to back pages.
Despite flogging this false narrative, Black Lives Matter was vaulted into the national spotlight in what became an aggressively militant black denunciation of American society in general as inherently and irredeemably racist. Only a complete restructuring of our culture could cure the problem.
This new role was a far cry from BLM’s founding purpose. As described by ABC News, BLM founders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi self-identify as trained Marxist organizers and two of them as queer. They started the movement in obscurity in 2013, intending to highlight discrimination against black members of the LGBTQ community.
BLM’s newly-expanded message of widespread systemic racism found fertile ground among liberals who saw themselves as standing on the moral high ground. As the late ethics professor Jean Bethke Elshtain wrote, “Pity is about how deeply I can feel. And in order to feel this way, to experience the rush of my own pious reaction, I need victims the way an addict needs drugs.”
Pres. Trump’s erratic and incessant messaging became a convenient target for BLM and the liberal establishment. But it took George Floyd’s killing in May 2020 to revitalize a faltering BLM and propel it back into the national spotlight. Once again, BLM militants applauded when peaceful marches and demonstrations turned into riots and orgies of looting and destruction, with one BLM organizer calling looting “justified reparations.”
Responding to BLM calls to defund the police and reform the country’s institutions, corporations anxious to be seen on the right side of racial justice donated over $90 million to BLM in 2020.
But since reaching that pinnacle of national attention and influence in the summer of 2020, it’s been all downhill with BLM falling from grace into scandal.
First, Democrats found that defunding the police and condoning riots were not winning messages. Many Democratic candidates backed away, a number of whom denied ever saying they supported defunding the police despite direct quotes from earlier in the summer.
Then following Biden’s election, BLM’s usefulness to the left as a romantic, revolutionary, anti-Trump force was lost. With Democrats in power, the movement became dispensable: renewed BLM societal criticism would by default be directed at them.
Awash with corporate funding and no longer as welcome in liberal circles, BLM has been exposed for grievously misusing its funds. It bought a $6 million mansion in Los Angeles for use by its leadership, using extensive legal maneuvers to hide its ownership.
One of BLM’s founders, Patrisse Cullors, announced her “retirement” when news reports showed that she had spent over $3 million of BLM funds on four different houses including a $1.4 million home in Los Angeles’ upscale Topanga Canyon.
Social philosopher and former longshoreman Eric Hoffer’s observation that “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket” certainly applies to BLM.
BLM’s anti-police message is out of step with the thinking of most blacks today. Even shortly after the George Floyd killing, 81% of blacks wanted the same or more police presence in their communities.
Racist messaging has no place in American society. The liberal tendency to ignore racism when practiced by blacks is inherently flawed and in the longer term, is a stumbling block for future progress.
I agree with Thomas Sowell when he said, “The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.”
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