Southern California was faced with multiple protests this weekend. Officer involved shootings in the past week in south Los Angeles, Pasadena, and El Cajon sparked protests and/or riots in each of those communities. Black Lives Matter spokespeople have also commented on the shootings. In our previous article we presented BLM with the facts regarding violence in the Black community. Now seems like a good time to offer BLM some valuable advice in regard to changing their approach. There are some serious changes BLM could make to help more educated and intelligent Americans take them seriously. Here are some important ones:
- BLM needs to immediately denounce the riots and violence that have permeated their protests, and those of their followers. Whether this violence is by design or coincidence, it is detrimental to their movement receiving any kind of serious recognition. BLM supporters disrupting traffic, engaging in property damage, and assaults only gives “the state” legal reason to incarcerate them. Is that not what BLM is trying to prevent? Then again, there are many BLM supporters who try to justify the violent behavior and inflammatory language. To them, America’s past history of slavery and Jim Crow laws is justification for their followers to behave violently. Yet none of these followers have ever experienced either of those institutions. Nor have those victims of their violent behavior ever been perpetrators of those institutions. Smashing store windows and tagging property with graffiti is not a way to get small business owners to support your cause.
- BLM should ditch the outrageous accusations of state sponsored genocide and oppression designed to inflame passions. Such accusations actually alienate them more than anything. If BLM wants to expand its support, it needs to stop accusing the establishment of being racist. Instead, they should focus on specific changes to laws and/or policies they believe to be discriminatory toward Blacks. They would find a wider, more legitimate, and educated support base if they did so. Americans are more receptive to criticism if it comes in a constructive manner.
- BLM needs to promote intraracial dialogue. Before accusing outside forces of being racist, they need to examine racism between Black Americans. The labels of “race traitor” and “Uncle Tom” are all too commonly used to describe Blacks who dare to imply the problems facing a lot of Black Americans are self inflicted. There is no doubt racism still exists in the United States. However, if you want to have an honest discussion about racism between Whites and Blacks, you cannot ignore racism between Blacks and Blacks.
It is a safe bet that BLM will not make any of these suggested changes. This is because they rely on a support base largely made up of ignorant liberal do-gooders, and/or outright criminals and anarchists. Furthermore, they rely on videos of law enforcement engaging in uses of force against Black suspects. These videos are usually useless as far as showing what actually occurred that lead to the use of force. However, they are perfect in sparking emotional outrage over what appears to be a militarized police force “victimizing” a Black citizen.
Let us take the case of Philandro Castile for example. The video circulated by his girlfriend via social media takes place immediately after the actual shooting. Nothing about the video proves innocence or guilt on the part of either Mr. Castile or the officer who shot him. It only provides us with the general “mood” of the situation after the shooting, where we see a distressed officer and a dying Mr. Castile. The video is perfect for BLM use. It gives us no facts about what led to the shooting, and all the emotion that came after. To the ignorant eye, it shows an uncaring and violent officer and a calm, yet tragic girlfriend.
Thanks to the dominance of social and liberal media, such a video spreads like wildfire; giving the feeling that excessive use of force by police is epidemic. Such videos are used by BLM and their supporters to advance an agenda. People are quick to feel sad for the pleading girlfriend and feel anger for the officer who has just taken a life. Many of these people have been told by Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton for years that they are oppressed and any contact with law enforcement is likely to lead to their death. This fits pretty well with BLM’s message that the State is responsible for violent Black deaths. The details of such events are either ignored or sometimes outright lied about by witnesses (i.e. “hands up, don’t shoot” in Ferguson, MO). Without details of the shooting or knowledge of police training, the public is simply left with a dead Black man, his saddened girlfriend, and a peace officer who has just taken a life.
Maybe the other reason BLM will not make the suggested changes is because they are afraid of finding out how wrong they are. There are little or no changes to “the state” that need to be made on the grand scale. If one is to ask the average BLM supporter what specific changes they would make to law and/or policy and procedure, they would not be able to articulate specifically what laws or P&Ps are discriminatory. Because BLM puts so much emphasis on police shootings, we will examine them a little more closely in the next article. We will also get into some specific strategies BLM could use if they are truly interested in decreasing violent deaths among Black Americans. As it stands right now, BLM will only make things worse if they continue their current approach.
Share This:
