black lives matter

I must give credit where credit is due.  Ilhan Omar and Black Lives Matter are incredibly efficient and organized, much more so than our lumbering and ossified republic.  Ilhan Omar, reviled by conservatives, immersed in controversy about fraudulent transactions with regard to her immigration and campaign funding fraud and blatant anti-semitism was able to turn Minneapolis into Mogadishu in 3 short years.  That is no mean feat.  I am even more impressed with Black Lives Matter   With the use of a mere label and brand, Black Lives Matter has been able to create a smokescreen and impenetrable forcefield around itself.  True marketing genius.

I and others have publicly excoriated Pope Francis for, among other things, his handling of the sex abuse scandals, his leap into politics, his secret deal with the Chinese Communist Party, his harsh criticism of Donald Trump while maintaining silence on the CCP.  None of this is met by a vituperative response.  Try that with BLM and your career and/or your company will face ruination. 

BLM has done an excellent job of building allies.  The NFL is kneeling before it.  The CEO of Chick-fil-A is shining your shoes.  National guard is submitting to you.  My email box is full of odes to BLM, with corporate breast beating and vows to do better.   Corporate America is showering millions upon it, without regard to where it goes or exactly where the money is flowing into.  It doesn’t matter to them. It’s protection money.  

At great risk to my own person, and whatever career I have remaining, I oppose Black Lives Matter categorically, unconditionally and without reservation.  Of course black lives matter (all lower case), and we all should remain committed to ensuring that black lives and all lives matter.

But Black Lives Matter is, well, another matter. Let’s scratch under the surface a bit.  You don’t actually have to look much beyond the label to see Black Lives Matter is all about.  My first exposure to Black Lives Matter was a few years ago when BLM marchers were in downtown Chicago, chanting “Pigs in a blanket. Fry ‘em like bacon,” and  “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now.”  That’s hardly a way to persuade me to jump in on your side.  I’m sympathetic to disparate treatment, if that can be shown, and I am sympathetic to protesting overreaching government agents.  You lost me immediately upon the call for violence.

If you relabel BLM for what it really is, the label would read something like Blacks for a Marxist and Reverse Apartheid Future.  If you listen to what its founders have said and read what it purports to be, that about captures it.  It seeks to abolish capitalism, the traditional Western family (with a 75% illegitimacy rate, it’s well along its way), do away with the police and defeat Donald Trump.  The name itself is fraudulent. 

We know this from the symbols it has chosen to denigrate.  Over the past two weeks we have seen erase figures of black achievement. It pressured Netflix to remove Gone With the Wind, and with it, the first black Oscar winner, Hattie McDaniel.  It forced Quaker Oats to rid itself of Aunt Jemima, the model for which was an amazing story of a woman that went from slavery to one of the first black millionaires.  Most perversely, they vandalized the memorial to the 54^th Massachusetts, the incredibly brave and inspirational Union Army regiment popularized by the film Glory.

While denigrating black success, the movement has chosen to lionize black criminality.  While George Floyd’s death was a gross and gruesome overreach of state power, Floyd himself was hardly a pillar of society. He was so bad that society said he needed to be removed from it for 5 years.  He apparently didn’t get the message and continued to engage in criminal behavior after his release.  None of this justifies his death at the hand of officer Chauvin, but the fact that he was given a larger hero’s funeral than Neil Armstrong had a couple of years earlier says something about the priorities of BLM.  Likewise, ABC News perversely claimed that Rayshard Brooks was to be “remembered for hard work and dedication to family” while he was jailed for beating his family.  Neither Brooks or Floyd deserve any adulation.

But BLM elevates criminals while tearing down actual black successes.

Then, of course, there are the black lives that should matter most---the young people of the black community.  It was ironic at the time of all the mayhem, Chicago had its bloodiest day.  The Chicago Sun Times posted pictures of the 18 people murdered in a 24 hour period, most young blacks, children really.   The shooting deaths of 16 year old Simeon cheerleader Akiera Boston and beautiful young Kaylyn Pryor affecting me so much that I blogged about them.   And as I write this, 9 people were killed over Father’s Day weekend, 4 of them children, including a 3 year old and a 13 year old girl.  Yet, BLM is more concerned with the deaths of criminals than the murders of so many beautiful young people in their communities.  Why do I seem to care more about the slaughter of the innocents than BLM?  Even more perversely, Planned Parenthood, the abortion provider of choice for the black community tweeted out its support of Black Lives Matter.  BLM is conveniently silent about the future of black America being slaughtered in the womb.  And if they make it out of the womb, they are slaughtered in the streets.

These are blunt, uncomfortable things to talk about.  BLM does nothing to help black success, improve black lives in any respect.  In Chicago, the looters started their dastardly deeds on the South Side, wrecking black businesses, destroying stores where African Americans shop and fill their prescriptions, and further obliterating job opportunities for blacks.

And this brings me to my view.  Many of my personal heroes have been black.  Willie Davis, who just passed away was a personal hero from the time I was about 8, first as a Green Bay Packer, then as a University of Chicago MBA and successful businessman.  Bill Curry’s description of him as a leader is inspirational and I urge you to watch it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRT6kjsIfC0 )     Alan Page of the Vikings and Bears, had a great second career in law and became Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court.  Two great highlights of my life were having an opportunity to meet the great Minnie Minoso, the first black player for the Chicago White Sox.  And then meeting the descendant of the great Frederick Douglass, Kenneth B. Morris, right after reading David Blight’s masterful biography of Douglass. We need more Willie Davises and fewer Nikole Hannah-Joneses (author of 1619 Project).

My message to BLM is this:

I know who you are and what you represent.  You may be able to fool some people with your clever label, but I know what you are.  You have done a good job of organizing to burn and destroy.  But you know nothing about growing and building.  Your actions damage actual black lives, especially young black lives.  You have learned your trade from Hamas. You hold yourself out as an advocate for the improvement of black lives but in reality, you are a Marxist terror and shakedown organization, with expertise in ruining people like U of C economics professor Harald Uhlig for daring to question you.  The funds that have poured into your coffers will only improve the black lives of those in a position to pilfer them.  I will oppose you and the chaos you seek to cause at every turn.

Actual black lives matter little to Black Lives Matter. I put my title in lower case because you can simultaneously believe that black lives matter and spurn Black Lives Matter.