Do Black Lives Matter?
We should understand that the cry “Black Lives Matter” is meant to focus, at this time, on the plights of blacks. That’s fine.
Of course black lives matter. For the public to think otherwise would be a calamity.
But they matter, and matter only, as a subset of “all lives matter.” The continuing hostility to the slogan “Black Lives Matter” stems, at least partly, from the hostility (or perceived hostility) of the BLM folks to the idea that all lives matter.
How can black lives matter if white lives don’t matter? Or yellow lives (curious, isn’t it: we no longer refer to Asians as “yellow”)? Or Hispanics (a manufactured class)? Or Aleuts? Or Bostonians? Or (deep breath) Trump supporters?
We should understand that the cry “Black Lives Matter” is meant to focus, at this time, on the plights of blacks. That’s fine too, as long as we don’t have to focus on black lives forever at the exclusion of everyone else.
We also have to recognize that a slogan can be sloganeered by lots of people who have different agendas. What A means may not be what B means—but it takes only a few malevolent Bs to corrupt the message of the benevolent As. When “Black Lives Matter” transmogrifies into “Get Whitey,” it’s blacks who lose, not whites.
And that has probably already happened to “Black Live Matter.” It’s become the rallying cry for the leftist fascisti. And most politicians are afraid to speak out against them—and why are you not surprised?
Even so, people of good will should still consider the plight of blacks in this country
Every ladder has a bottom rung, and when you look at the economics of a society you will always find someone on that rung. The rest of the people on that ladder should always be concerned about the people below them: we should always be concerned about our fellow man, of course.
So far, so good. Nothing to see here. Keep moving.
Then what’s the problem?
The problem is two-fold. Part of it is the noisy advocates for the black community.
And part of it is the black community itself.
Some of the “Black Lives Matter” advocates are like—or actually are—the rioters and looters we saw on television after George Floyd’s death: not peaceful protestors but opportunists out for free TV sets and expensive basketball shoes (!!)—and their intellectual sidekicks who call for the abolition of the police as an electoral strategy.
In the last year, 707 people were murdered in Chicago; 390 of them were black. Are those lives included in the slogan “Black Lives Matter”? What is the likely effect of decreasing the police presence in the areas where those blacks were murdered? (Use only one blue book.)
As a group, blacks are poorer than whites. The poverty rate of blacks is about 20 percent; that of whites, 10 percent. Remarkably, but largely unremarked, that is true more than half a century after the start of the Democrat Party’s “Great Society” multi-billion dollar programs, which claimed they could change that statistic.
Blacks routinely, again and again (that’s what routinely means), vote for Democrats. But people who really care, who care beyond sloganeering, must ask, “Why?”
A piece in Sunday’s Washington Post is headlined “Protest Organizers Skeptical of Politics.” (Finally!) The subheading reads: “Activists resist calls from Democrats, saying party has failed them before.”
What’s an example of progress? A drunk deciding that alcohol may not be good for him after all.
An activist in Philadelphia is quoted as saying: “We’ve seen enough to know how this goes and how this plays out. I’m tired of going into the same old room with the same old council member and the same state representative who have the same old mind-set. It’s why we keep getting the same old stuff.” Exactly!
But five will get you a thousand that you can’t find a single BLM enthusiast who regularly votes Republican—or, probably, who has ever voted Republican.
Eleven years after the Obama–Biden team was elected, blacks and their supporters are telling us that today things have never been worse. We should ask, again, how did that hopey-changey thing work out for ya?
Lucy, the football, and Charlie Brown is the metaphor for the blacks’ voting habits.
So: Part I of the black renaissance is to vote Republican. And the point of voting Republican is not just that Republicans have (or may have) better ideas. It is rather, and perhaps primarily, to make Democrats come up with new ideas and abandon the “same old mind-set” the activist in Philadelphia complained about.
Part II is much more difficult: blacks have to learn how to get and stay married. Seventy-seven percent of black children are illegitimate. If the word “illegitimate” offends you—it’s meant to! It’s meant to call your attention to the well-known fact that the vast majority of children (whatever their race) who grow up without two parents (and especially without a father) simply do not become what in public policy circles are rather coldly called “functioning economic units.” That means they will be stuck on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, probably for their entire lives.
Poor people have tougher lives than non-poor people. Some have awful lives. And their awful lives have nothing whatsoever to do with their color.
So to the extent that all these protests focus on color and ignore marital status they will be mostly wasted efforts.
And that, truly, is a calamity.