The following is my response to a post that took the stance that Black Lives Matter and white people need to mean it when they say it. The writers premise was that the black community all the way back to slavery have been oppressed , victimized and deprived of education, opportunity and social status. I felt compelled to respond.
I appreciate your sincerity but I do believe you started from the wrong place.
Of course Black Lives Matter, so do yellow, tan, blue, and yes even white.
The genesis for the Black Lives Matter mantra was “hands up, don’t shoot” that even though false became the battle cry against law enforcement. Google some of the vile and vicious rhetoric, the signs and violence perpetrated under that guise. F**k Cops, Kills Pigs, etc. It is difficult to recognize that as a unifying movement.
Although your timeline and arguments have some merit, so do the trillions of dollars that have been directed at communities of color. What was not given to those communities was self-reliance and ambition to achieve the American dream. The government made sure of that by generating program after program and funds that made those communities dependent on the politicians. All the speechifying in the world about oppression does not make it true. Do you forget the many, many laws that have been passed to level the playing field, the Civil Rights Act, Equal Opportunity Employment laws, government set asides for minority owned businesses, preferential placement on civil service lists, etc. All designed to break the chains of poverty with no avail. To blanketly bemoan the Walmart success against the black community is distorted at best. You cannot deny the progress that has been made. People of color have risen to the heights of society, including a President, many Senators, Congressmen, Business Owners of major companies, CEOs and top executives of Fortune level companies. Why, I must ask have they achieved their successes, are they not members of the same community you label as oppressed.
But I digress. No one and I mean no one disagreed that the killing of Mr. Floyd was horrendous and evil. As a former NYCPD Detective my initial and only reaction was that the cop should have been arrested almost immediately. And I might add, so should the officers that stood by and did nothing.
As to the distorted position that white cops kill black citizens in wholesale numbers you know that is not true, but is the back bone of the Black Lives Matter agenda. It has been statistically disproved as was “hands up, don’t shoot”. Black Lives Matter proports that police are out to kill their brothers and sisters with abandon. Again, not true. So your opening line, although true does not acknowledge that it too has been hijacked.
Racial divide is fermented by those incidents that are plastered all over every media outlet, cable station or internet platform. Cell phone video provides vivid and often disturbing images of violence and also death. Many of the cases that reach the national consciousness are really outliers in the overall condition of society. There are bad actors in every single walk of life. Bad police, bad politicians, bad stock brokers, bad doctors, bad clergy even. Evil roams the world each and every day. You will never stop it. Our only hope is to deter it. How you might ask, by good police and good policing.
The protests were allowed to turn into riots and violence by the very politicians who govern. The issue was too hot for them to address so that retreated, delayed and obfuscated allowing tension, resentments and anger to spill over. Had they acted judiciously, beyond firing the cops, the situation may have been very different. The country could have pulled together behind the acknowledgement that George Floyd was killed by bad cops.
The agitators and ne’er do wells have hijacked what could have been an historic positive born out of evil and trashed not only the opportunity to heal but create battle lines that exacerbate the divide.
A revisit of 1968 and the aftermath of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is very sad and disheartening to see. Whole neighborhoods were destroyed, innocent business owners lost their livelihoods and possibly their future. Citizens were beaten, cops were attacked even going as far as burning down a police station.
As distorted as it may seem championing Black Lives Matter under the current conditions is counterproductive. It draws a deeper and wider divide because it will be misused, misappropriated and devalued by those who seek not to heal but destroy.