As an organization, Black Lives Matter is diametrically opposed to the majority of Americans of every race, creed, and color, not just the American way of life. With the help of mainstream media coverage, which sanitizes its radical views and goals, the organization has hoodwinked many well-intentioned Americans and will continue to do so with its particular brand of neo-Marxism, deconstruction of traditional values, and calculated outrage. Amid the rapid spread and scope of the movement in recent months, here are five ways in which the organization’s values and goals clash with the majority of Americans.
1. BLM seeks to abolish traditional family values
With its repeated attacks on heteronormativity and the nuclear family, BLM seeks to abolish not only traditional values as they exist in America, but, also, as they exist in nearly every culture around the world. The truth is the vast majority of men and women are heterosexual and most still believe in traditional notions of marriage and fidelity, especially among immigrant communities here in America.
Here is how BLM’s official site describes its goal of “disrupting” the nuclear family:
“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement… When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual…”
The massive blind spot in BLM’s antagonism toward traditional family values is that those very same values continue to serve as the bedrock for immigrant communities throughout America and have done so for centuries, whether it’s generations of Italian and Irish immigrants or, more recently, Asian, Latino, and Eastern European immigrants. Citing the Census Bureau, the Institute For Family Studies reported:
“[C]hildren of immigrants are more likely, not less likely, than children of native-born Americans to be growing up in traditional families, i.e., with two married parents.”
Additionally — and crucially to the aims of the larger “black lives matter” movement (as opposed to the organization) — the traditional nuclear family is imperative for black prosperity in America now more than ever, as Glenn T. Stanton of The Federalist points out:
“Beyond the mistaken assumption that the “nuclear family” is unique to the Western world, their position is profoundly concerning. BLM, as an organization, seeks to dismantle the very institution that mountains of published academic research has consistently demonstrated as most likely to strengthen and empower Black Americans and their children: the traditional, nuclear family.”
2. BLM seeks to cancel capitalism
Capitalism has allowed the U.S. to become the greatest economy the world has ever seen. For centuries, generations of Americans and immigrants from all over the world have been afforded a far greater standard of living because of America’s capitalism-based economic system. It’s the driving impetus behind the American dream. Yet Black Lives Matter organizers openly seek to dismantle it.
In 2017, Melina Abdullah, one of the most influential of BLM’s leaders and a professor at California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA), declared on her radio show, Beautiful Struggle:
“[W]e have to disrupt the white supremacist, capitalistic, patriarchal, heteronormative system that is really the root cause of these police killings.”
Anthony Ratcliff, another BLM leader and tenured professor at CSULA, echoed her assertion, declaring that capitalism is “just as nefarious” as white supremacy and thus must be eliminated as well:
“Black Lives Matter and other organizations have as much hatred or vitriol against capitalism… Until we start to see capitalism [is] just as nefarious as white supremacy, we will always be struggling.”
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3. BLM disallows anyone from transcending the superficial categories of race and color
According to BLM, one is hopelessly confined to the superficialities of race and color by supposedly overarching patriarchal strictures and structures. This is a classic Marxist trope promoted in the works of Michel Foucault and other radical theorists that refuses to acknowledge the volition and agency of each and every individual, regardless of color, creed, or circumstance.
It’s also a Marxist trope that the great and complex American writer, James Baldwin, summarily dismissed even as a gay, black man in the 1950s.
In the final lines of “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” a scathing critique of Richard Wright’s Marxist novel, “Native Son,” Baldwin dismantles the spurious notions of being confined to one’s race and class by some nebulous patriarchal structure with eloquent precision:
“The failure…lies in its rejection of life, the human being, the denial of his beauty, dread, power, in its insistence that it is his categorization which is real and cannot be transcended.”
The great failure of BLM is that it yields to an inherently flawed Marxist paradigm that disallows the individual to prosper, grow, and transcend regardless of race, color, or circumstance. Instead, it seeks to confine all people, particularly minorities, to narrow, external categories of race and color to further its agenda.
4. BLM marginalizes many shared values of minorities and immigrant communities
Whether by misandry or the constant derision directed at heterosexuality and values such as marriage, fidelity, traditional gender roles, and religious beliefs, most minorities in America are also targeted, directly or indirectly, by the agenda of the Black Lives Matter organization.
Most minorities come from immigrant communities that hold to values that are directly opposed to what BLM espouses. This includes most black communities as well. These individuals and communities do not want their beliefs and ways of life challenged or ruined by the postmodern constructs, loose sexual mores, and gender-fluid values that BLM propagates.
In particular, the supposed “spirituality” that BLM promotes is really just a mishmash of New Age tropes that are anathema to the religious beliefs of many immigrant communities that have or are assimilating into the American way of life. For example, according to The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs:
“The movement [BLM] infuses a syncretic blend of African and indigenous cultures’ spiritual practices and beliefs, embracing ancestor worship; Ifa-based ritual such as chanting, dancing, and summoning deities; and healing practices such as acupuncture, reiki, therapeutic massage, and plant medicine in much of its work, including protest.”
It’s worth noting that, according to the Pew Research Center, almost 70% of immigrants to America are Christian. The New Age syncretism that BLM espouses is often considered sacrilege to the religious practices of these immigrants. Yet, the organization continues to indoctrinate the children of these immigrants through the media and on campuses nationwide to oppose the beliefs of the religious teachings of their upbringing until it falls in line with their larger cultural and political agenda.
5. BLM is explicitly Marxist in orientation
BLM’s founders, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, and Opal Tometi, openly admit to being Marxists. They draw almost exclusively from critical theory and its offshoot, critical race theory (CRT). Both theories are rooted in Marxist thought and have been a mainstay in left-wing academia for decades. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers a detailed analysis of critical theory while Encyclopedia Britannica offers a more succinct definition:
“Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, critical theorists maintain that a primary goal of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures through which people are dominated and oppressed…Since the 1970s, critical theory has been immensely influential in the study of history, law, literature, and the social sciences.”
Writing for Public Discourse, R. Albert Mohler, Jr. offers a necessary critique of why critical theory and BLM are in opposition to the American way of life:
“[G]uided by Marxist ideology that seeks to revolutionize our culture and society… Black Lives Matter operates from a worldview that undercuts human dignity. It sees each person’s identity as determined by externally imposed social structures, which are in turn determined by the human desire to seize power and oppress others. Such identity politics entangles human identity in subjective, materialist terms…”
It’s important to note that Mohler does not, at all, dismiss the notion of “black lives matter” as a sentiment. In fact, as the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, he offers a broad and compassionate take rooted in the very American values BLM seeks to erase:
“Today, there are very real and urgent moral concerns about the lives and well-being of black Americans. It is not wrong in our context, therefore, to say ‘black lives matter’ as a sentence…But it’s not that simple…Black Lives Matter did not emerge merely as a sentence. Those three words function as a message and a platform making a significant political statement…”
Currently, BLM has far more to do with Mao and his violent Cultural Revolution that lead to the death of untold millions than Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement. King demanded an end to injustices rooted in the inequality and racism that were contrary to American values. Mao, however, sought and succeeded in uprooting an entire nation through violence and propaganda.
Like Mao, BLM seeks to uproot the very foundations of a nation with its Marxist goals. In this sense, they view our nation, in its entirety, with all its deep struggles and great achievements, as a lost cause.
Related: 8 Ways Black Lives Matter Activists Changed The Nation’s Largest Criminal Justice System