Not All Black Lives Matter to Black Lives Matter

From Ben Shapiro at Townhall:

This week, CNN's Don Lemon, who has spent the last few weeks bashing the supposed thoroughgoing systemic racism of the United States, hosted black actor Terry Crews. He then proceeded to browbeat Crews, who had committed the great sin of tweeting, "#ALLBLACKLIVESMATTER 9 black CHILDREN killed by violence in Chicago since June 20, 2020." Lemon specifically objected to Crews' hashtag. After Lemon humbly informed Crews that he has skin "as tough as an armadillo," he then lectured: "The Black Lives Matter movement was started because it was talking about police brutality. ... But that's not what Black Lives Matter is about. It's not ... all-encompassing ... The Black Lives Matter movement is about police brutality and injustice in that matter, not about what's happening in black neighborhoods."

This, of course, is largely false. The Black Lives Matter movement did indeed begin with protests about police brutality but quickly morphed into broader debates over the validity of looting and rioting, tearing down historic statues, slavery reparations and defunding the police. And Black Lives Matter, as Crews correctly pointed out, has never restricted its mandate to the question of police violence: It has announced that its focuses also include police brutality, transgender rights, gay rights, disrupting the nuclear family and freeing Palestine, among other diverse topics. So why is Lemon so deeply invested in preventing conversations about black lives? Why, in fact, do only some black lives matter, rather than all? (Read more.)

From The Federalist:

New York City is one of many school systems in the United States set to roll out Black Lives Matter (BLM)-themed lesson plans this fall. According to the NYC Department of Education, teachers will delve into “systemic racism,” police brutality, and white privilege in their classrooms. 

North Carolina’s largest school system in Wake County launched a website this summer that provides BLM lessons for teachers to use in classrooms and for parents to use at home. The website, created by the school system’s Office of Equity Affairs, encourages teachers to “address the injustices that exist beyond education by the conversations we have with others, by speaking up when we see hate, by supporting efforts that oppose racism and oppression, and by directly engaging in advocacy work.” 

Encouraging people to identify and condemn racism is an undeniably laudable undertaking by these school administrators. That’s not what’s really happening, however. By bringing BLM into the classroom, activist educators are allowing the most radically divisive movement in modern American history to warp children’s worldviews. 

Wake County’s BLM teaching resource is dressed up as a legitimate civics education resource, complete with tips for fostering civil discourse and a section on teaching historical facts about America’s civil rights movement. But closer inspection reveals it to be a deliberate Trojan Horse conceived to incubate, amplify, and channel the movement’s attitudes for political ends. 

The site lays out a cult-like recruiting process for students to follow. Step one: Recognize your white privilege. Step two: Learn the dos and don’ts of being an ally. Step three: Recruit more members to learn steps one and two. Step three of the recruitment process posits, “Racial equity accountability must be tied to specific outcomes.” What, exactly, are these outcomes? The obvious answer is activism on behalf of the BLM movement.
(Read more.) 

Also from The Federalist:

The Black Lives Matter protests are radical, they are violent, and they have claimed innocent lives all over the country. This isn’t a surprise: We’ve watched this movement played out before by many of the exact same leaders and even under the exact same name. Now, through a combination of political foolishness, public amnesia, and willful media gaslighting, America gets to live it all again — and more civilians and police officers are being attacked and even killed. 

The Black Lives Matter movement isn’t new at all. It’s the same loose collection of good-thinking people concerned over police violence and violent, anti-police and anti-family radicals as it was when it first gained national prominence in 2014. As a refresher, the group was founded in 2013, during President Barack Obama’s second term and after the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida. It wasn’t until a rash of viral police-related deaths the next year that its national profile began to rise, including protests over the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in New York City, and then the following year Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina. 

It was cheered on at the time by the media for all the same reasons it’s being cheered on today: Some of the viral videos and events convincingly depicted unjustified killings of black suspects by police, and despite the clear and radical politics of the founders, their name conveys an obvious truism. Unfortunately, it quickly showed its violent and intolerant side then, just as it has today. 

Americans likely most clearly recall Ferguson’s protests, where for days black-owned businesses were torched and looted. Over the next few years, we watched in horror as Baltimore’s years-long revival was stopped in its tracks, block after block burned, and families attending an afternoon baseball game were set upon by screaming mobs. 

As editor in chief of The Daily Caller News Foundation then, I oversaw our broader Baltimore 2015 riot coverage. As two in the morning approached on April 28, I turned off the police scanner, confident our guys were OK and looking forward to a few hours’ sleep before an early workday. Minutes later, our man running the coverage on the ground texted, “We are alright,” which indicated to me that they were not alright at all. Indeed, my friend was in the emergency room with two of our young reporters, who had been beaten and robbed by the rioters. 

“When I saw the guy heading our way with a hammer in his hand and a bandanna covering his face, I knew he meant business,” a New York Daily News reporter who ran to their aid and then drove our guys through the mob to safety wrote later that morning. By the time they escaped, Caller reporter Casey Harper was struggling to stay conscious with a severe concussion, broken eye socket, and stolen phone, while his colleague Connor Wolf got off with a broken nose (and managed to hold onto his blood-stained notebook throughout). The two had been targeted for being white. No one slept until after we were back in the newsroom and their story was filed. (Read more.) 

From Breitbart:

But, how did we get here, Mr. Biden? You have been in power longer than just about anybody else alive. You were in the United States Senate for more than 35 years. You fondly recall yukking it up with racist segregationists in your own party for decades. For 47 years, you have been at the highest echelons of power. You were chairman of two of the most powerful committees in Congress, one of which gave you unrivaled authority to shape the federal judiciary.

In your final eight years of power, you were in the White House. There you served as the wise elder statesman over the executive branch of government — a post you want voters to return you to. Such White Privilege. At the very least, Mr. Biden, you are responsible for the racist hellhole that you claim is half of America. Why would anyone expect you to fix a mess you are responsible for, a mess you refuse to even take responsibility for? White Privilege. Most troubling of all, why should anyone expect you to fix a mess that you have either ignored or proved yourself incapable of fixing during the 47 years you have lorded over every branch of the federal government? Sheer, unadulterated White Privilege. (Read more.)

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