On Monday night, alleged news anchor Don Lemon brought actor Terry Crews onto his program to lecture him for expressing unauthorized view points. Crews, who is black, has argued that Black Lives Matter should have more to say about black-on-black violence. Lemon explained that Black Lives Matter does not mean “all black lives,” but specifically that small minority of lives that are taken in police shootings. According to Lemon, BLM has an intentionally narrow focus, and that focus simply cannot make room for the thousands of black lives lost every year due to black-on-black violence.
Even if this were true, it would be a paltry defense. If police brutality is all that Black Lives Matter cares about, then it should be called Police Brutality Matters. And even if it was called Police Brutality Matters, and it did stay on that topic, valid criticisms could be made about the choice to focus on a problem that is relatively small in comparison to all of the other dangers faced by the average black person, especially in the inner city. But as it happens, Black Lives Matter does not limit its advocacy to police brutality. It engages on a whole host of issues that have little to do with preserving black life or holding law enforcement accountable.
Indeed, the organization’s website reads like a feminist blog or a gender studies syllabus. Here is some of its “What We Believe” mission statement:
We make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead.
We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence.
We build a space that affirms Black women and is free from sexism, misogyny, and environments in which men are centered.
We practice empathy. We engage comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts.
We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
We foster a queer‐affirming network. 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 (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).
We cultivate an intergenerational and communal network free from ageism. We believe that all people, regardless of age, show up with the capacity to lead and learn.
We embody and practice justice, liberation, and peace in our engagements with one another.
Under the “What Matters” tab, there’s even more to add to the progressive wish list:
BLM’s #WhatMatters2020 will focus on issues concerning racial injustice, police brutality, criminal justice reform, Black immigration, economic injustice, LGBTQIA+ and human rights, environmental injustice, access to healthcare, access to quality education, and voting rights and suppression.
So, BLM advocates for trans rights, gay rights, women’s rights, voting rights, economic justice, environmental justice, healthcare access, education, and “queer-affirming networks,” and against the patriarchy, cisgender privilege, “trans-antagonist violence,” ageism, sexism, the nuclear family, and “heteronormative thinking.” This is nothing but a list of every item on the Left’s agenda — in some cases, the Extremely Far Left’s agenda.
I wonder: how many average black people, if you were to conduct a poll, would mention cisgender privilege, the patriarchy, trans-antagonism, the nuclear family, and heteronormative thinking as problems that especially worry them? I imagine a fair number of wealthy white girls at an expensive university would cite these as important issues, and probably everyone at a gay pride rally would agree with most of BLM’s mission statement, but why are the priorities of gay activists and liberal white girls so prominently represented by an organization that calls itself Black Lives Matter?
And, given the expansive focus of this organization, why can’t it find room to so much as mention the murder of black Americans by other black Americans? Black people are murdered at a rate 6 times higher than whites historically and over 90 percent of those murders are perpetrated by other black people. How can BLM mention trans people four times in its mission statement and yet make not one mention of the thousands of victims of non-police violence in our cities?
Black life is indeed being devalued, destroyed, and discarded on a massive scale and at an alarming rate. A message of “black lives matter” is desperately needed. But almost all of this destruction, with rare exception, is happening within the black community and by the black community. A Black Lives Matter movement that ignores this fact cannot hope to be effective in preserving and defending black life.
That is why it is fortunate for BLM that they don’t care about preserving and defending black life, at least that is not their true point or goal. They are, as their own words clearly show, a far-left political advocacy group that cares solely about advancing far-left political interests. The name is nothing but a front (a clever front, we must admit). As Don Lemon told Terry Crews, Black Lives Matter isn’t fighting for all black life, or even most black life. If someone wants an organization that fulfills that purpose, they’ll have to form it themselves.