Black Lives Madder

Where did BLM go wrong?

Back when I was living in Arizona earlier this year, I found a Black Lives Matter t-shirt at Savers, took it home, cut off the sleeves and turned into a sexy gym shirt.  Then I went to work out and paid close attention to the looks I got from the ancient Arizona hicks.  Though the majority of them paid me no mind, there were a few who did a double take and then I watched as something I would describe as exasperation and disgust cloud their faces.

What was it about the BLM movement that really got white people’s goat?

Some would say that a lot of the initiatives and proposals were born of left-wing extremism and exorbitance, like cancelling folks with contrasting views and defunding the po-po.  Others may think that it wasn’t the messages as much as the messengers (the big nappy hair, the shouting) that brought frowns to white people’s faces.  Those all-caps posting and noisy pontificating on podcasts and television programs really got their panties in a bunch.  I believe that the biggest reason they rallied against BLM was that white Americans do not want things thrown all up in their faces, especially if those things highlight the incongruence in their belief systems.  They are very comfortable in seeing systemic racism as something that just landed on earth from outer space instead of a concrete and fully functioning component of the systems that people like them created.  BLM tried to force white people to stop looking out the window and into the mirror for the reasons that explain why race relations continue to be so crappy; it’s always been easier for them to deem racial discrimination as this inexplicable, nebulous thing that’s always been there like the ozone layer or The Price is Right.  And it’s something that they can’t really do anything about.  The best they can do to combat racism is to paint END RACISM in the NFL end zone or sew a STOP HATE patch on NBA jerseys.  That’s really all we can do, they’ll tell you.

The second you publicly define racism as a main component of social, economic and political systems that were originally created by the country’s founding fathers, you’re getting yourself into hot water because most white people will instantly bristle at your accusations and go into defense mode.  They get pissy mad when you try to convince them that racial discrimination is something that is imposed upon one man or woman by another man or woman and not something that just mysteriously fell out of the sky and crashed onto Black people’s head like a cartoon anvil.  You cannot point out to them that white men sat down with pen in hand and wrote racially specific dictamens directly into their federal, state and local laws and that these actions have played a crucial role in creating the big fucking mess we’re in today.  They would rather believe that racism was brought to us by Slendermann or Bigfoot, so white liberals and pesky BLM members need to stop trying to implicate them in stuff they had nothing to do with.  It just makes them angry!

Stop making white people mad by criticizing the systems they support and will defend tooth and nail!  They are eager to show everyone just how proud they are of their cultural patrimony by proudly flying the ol’ stars and stripes outside their trailer homes, printing it on t-shirts and sticking decals to their car bumpers.  Hell, they’ll even proudly carry that same flag at the nation’s capital while violently storming its governmental offices in an attempt to overturn the very same system they just swore to God they’d fight to the death to defend.  But don’t you dare point this hypocrisy out to them because that would just make their white lives madder.

What’s the main difference between the legacies of MLK and Malcolm X? It’s not the divergent philosophies they espoused, but rather that one incensed white people by calling them out on their shit (Malcolm) while the other schmoozed them with oodles of church talk and reconciliatory rhetoric.  White people love the docile, non-threatening minority who’s not going to say shit about their crazy fuckin’ shit.  (Why do you think they have seamlessly welcomed Asians into the fold, even after the whole Pearl Harbor kerfuffle? Because Asians eagerly kowtow to them with their heads bowed, only opening their mouths when a white man is ready to stick his dick in it.)  While Martin used pacific and accommodating language in public that made whites ooh and aah, Malcolm X drew blood by picking at the scabs of America’s racist society, aggressively railing against her beloved systems. And he paid dearly for it.  Along with the likes of Marcus Garvey and Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, the Powers That Be have worked diligently to erase Malcolm X’s legacy from history, reducing it to the naming of potholed streets that run through shitty neighborhoods in his honor.  BLM did not learn vicariously from Malcolm X’s shabby treatment, and BLM’s erasure from the annals of American history should be complete by this time next year.

If you are a true American, you believe that ours is a perfect system that functions perfectly and if you somehow don’t realize that, then you’re a perfect idiot.  And when some racially motivated incident rears its ugly head, it’s seen as an apparition, an outlier, a blip on the radar screen that’s usually met with the customary There’s no place for racism in ______________ (insert name of town) or the even more delusional _____________ (insert racially motivated shit somebody done did)  is not who we are. Even though BLM never bombed, hanged, shot or tortured anyone, their actions were deemed threatening enough for some folks to call for their immediate designation as a terrorist organization on the same level as Al Qaeda or Hamas.  Yes, BLM did espouse a few kooky ideas, but what happened to them just follows the playbook of any non-white folks who publicly call white people out on their shit.  Buh-bye, BLM.

By the look on your faces, I can see that some of you think I’m blowing this whole thing out of proportion.  So, I’m gonna stop writing now and go watch the football game because my boy Colin Kaepernick is starting at QB today.  

Huh? What’s that you say about Colin??

(The above was written in early 2023.)

AFTERTHOUGHT

Some people went to the ballot stations on November 5, 2024 without really knowing what they were voting against, a theory supported by reports of a huge spike in Google searches asking if Joe Biden had dropped out of the race or not.  All they knew was who and what they were voting for.  This represents the complete transition from the white guilt of the 1990s to the white defiance of the 2010s and now the white denial and forgetfulness of today.  Neither BLM nor DEI nor #metoo can’t make someone feel bad about something they had nothing to do with or can even remember at this point.  Ask a typical young American about Jim Crow and he might respond that the name sounds familiar, like someone who did a duet with Dua Lipa on her last album.  The re-election of Trump represents a level of historical revisionism and cultural forgetfulness that serves his undereducated white male constituents to a T, a consortium that will not be BLM-ed into caring about injustice nor #metoo-ed into empathizing with women’s problems.  He represents a defiance that looks at the plight of minorities, thumbs a nose up to it and asks, “So what?” Oh, how I wish I could live such a carefree existence where I don’t have to always be worried about how my race is seen as a threat and a menace.  Oh wait, I do live such an existence!  And that’s because I no longer reside in the United States of America.