What Does BLM Accomplish?

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

As I put it recently of Black Lives Matter, it's "an organization whose name I can't agree with more, and whose ideas and methods I can't agree with less."

But let's skip the ideas and methods for a moment, and focus on consequences.

What, exactly, is BLM accomplishing?

Francis Menton of The Manhattan Contrarian has just offered us a nice, up-to-date summary, in his most recent post, "Chicago, Circling the Drain:"

Image by Gabe Pierce, via Unsplash, license.
[L]ast night, a second wave of looting erupted in Chicago, including both in the downtown and in the luxury shopping district just north of downtown known as the "Miracle Mile." There are many videos of the looting, which appears to have been orchestrated on social media.

I'm just completely mystified about the thought process. Let's assume the worst for the police as to the incident on Sunday. Even so, how is that somehow a bigger issue than the well-over-300 blacks murdered so far this year in Chicago by people who are not the police? And again, even if you assume the worst about the police incident, how is looting an appropriate response? Encouraging young black people to go out on looting sprees is making them completely unemployable in any professional job and ruining whatever chance they might have had for high paying jobs and careers. The demonstrators shout "black lives matter" while they destroy black lives by the hundreds or thousands. [bold added]
All I can think to add here, for the sake of anyone who imagines BLM to be an ally of black Americans is this, from Ayn Rand villain Ellsworth Toohey: "Don't bother to examine a folly, ask yourself only what it accomplishes."

All this is hardly to say that the pain, suffering, and loss of everyone else affected by this senseless violence -- emphatically including business and property owners -- doesn't also count.

-- CAV

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gus:

One of the reasons I left Illinois/Chicago was precisely because of this. Not only has this state failed miserably; its been like this for the past 15-20 years. The quote, end quote leadership in the city is due to bad public policy. So hoodlums have literally been given a walk out jail free card. The bail system has enabled this. Mayor Lightfoot has proven a disaster. Unfortunately, Governor Pritzker, who is from a very wealthy Chicago family, has effectively disappeared. I will spare you the gory details about him, and Illinois politics in particular. I'm so disgusted right now because I had no choice but to return to this hellhole.

BLM is a Marxist organization. One of the founders admitted that much. However, I always knew this organization was using black people as fodder to implement a quasi-Communist government. Because of our history with slavery, Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights Movement, it was easy to undermine the nation's founding principles by showing how bad it was for black people. Notice how Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, and Americans of their caliber are not even mentioned? That is not by accident. Or this 1619 Project, which isn't even history. This "project" is being implemented at public schools; and in all places Chicago's dismal public school system.

This has nothing to do with police brutality. It has everything to do with black culture, i.e. "ghetto or hood culture", which the left believes is "authentic" black culture; IT IS NOT. There is a large segment of the black community which is quite frankly, feral. To think so low of a people; to justify this madness is pure racism. My father died in May 2019. He grew up under Jim Crow. We would have long discussions about his life in Alabama. They were poor sharecroppers, but they had property!!!! I'm sure Gus as a native Mississippian, you were acutely aware of the racism, even though those laws were no longer on the books. My father was given permission by his mother to move, at age 16, to Chicago. He worked, so much so he afforded us a stable upper-middle class lifestyle. The only negatives I saw growing up was his lack of trust or suspicion of things. Or his inability to enjoy the finer things life. He always lived as if he were still poor. However, he made, and never made excuses.

Bookish Babe

Gus Van Horn said...

BB,

I completely agree with this: "There is a large segment of the black community which is quite frankly, feral. To think so low of a people; to justify this madness is pure racism."

And to encourage it or imitate it is unspeakable.

Today most people seem to be well on board with racial equality. Opportunity abounds for anyone who wants to chase it. It is monstrous that so many of our cultural institutions are now encouraging racism and barbarism -- or failing to stand up to those who do.

Thank you for sharing your dad's bittersweet, but inspiring story. That's the kind of triumph over injustice that more people should know about or be reminded of.

Gus

Greg said...

"As I put it recently of Black Lives Matter, it's "an organization whose name I can't agree with more, and whose ideas and methods I can't agree with less.""

I know what you intend when you say you agree that black lives matter. Of course they do. Why wouldn't they? To make the point for individualism wouldn't it be a better response to say: "No one's life matters because of his skin color."

Gus Van Horn said...

Greg,

I don't have a problem with the phrase, "black lives matter," as an off-the-cuff rejection of (actual) racism -- or at least I didn't before Marxists named an organization with it. That still leaves the door open to make a case for individualism as the basis for racial equality in our culture and political institutions.

I think you have a point, though: Current events make it necessary to distance oneself from the bigots who largely control the narrative and are trying to monopolize the discussion or shut it down altogether.

That said, I'd be more positive when necessary to move to individualism: "Everyone's life matters whatever his sin color."

Gus