Fairway Frank's View of Black Lives Matter

Black Lives Matter has been very successful in raising the awareness of racial tensions in America. Unfortunately, the movement is now adding to those tensions. It is past time for BLM to get things under control.

When I see violence being carried out with the message that America is racist, I am offended. I hate to say this but it makes me feel like a white-American under attack, not the race-neutral-American that we should all strive to be. This is how the violent protestors are making race relations worse.

My reaction to the first BLM inspired violence was that it mirrored the Tea Party experience. Whenever an idiot at a Tea Party event said something racist, the news media played it up as though everyone associated with the Tea Party was racist. When the first BLM protests turned violent, I thought it was a few idiots that were ruining the reputation of a movement that had a message to deliver. However, the number of people that are now participating in violent acts of property damage and bodily injury is not few. And acts of violence are much more repugnant than a racist slur. In addition to the harm it causes, violence is a statement that there is no room for negotiating, there is only an option to surrender to the perpetrators demands. It is societal extortion. And, that angers people. Even people that want to make things better do not wish to engage with extortionists.

Jessie Jackson stated that the violence related to the police shootings is justified. When a leader of the black community specifically condones violence, we are in trouble. The situation has reached crisis level. Is there not a leader in America that can step to the plate and annunciate the BLM mission and provide hope to the black community that America will do better? Probably not, because there are no new ideas floating around to make America better.

If the issue is cops shooting black people, there is no argument. We all agree that some of the shootings have been horrible, unnecessary tragedies. Fortunately, big brother has arrived and we can now see all the horrors perpetrated on planet earth. The light of day that has been shined on the problem will fix the problem. Protests to keep the pressure on to fix the problem faster (like not standing for the national anthem and protest marches) are fine, violence is not.

But the problem is much deeper than cop shootings. An African-American on television best summed the problem when he stated that when a black cop shoots a black man it is not the black cop that is shooting, it is “the system” that employs the black cop that shoots the black man. This is a clear statement that some blacks do not believe that they have any stake in “the system.” The perspective is that they do not control the system with their vote and they do not shape the system with their voices. They are merely victims of the system. I am not stating that this is the perspective of all black people, but the number of black people that resonate with the message of BLM makes me think that the number is significant. And, we should be listening.

By the way, “the system” is society at large with its values and norms that get codified into law and then enforced by society at large – not just by police. It is the neighbor that sees something and calls the cops to help another neighbor. It is the citizen that witnesses a crime and comes forth to make sure justice is served. The system is society.

The problem is not cops shooting black people, it is societal breakdown. One group of society perceives itself as being the prey of another group of society. That is scary. If I were black and felt that way, I would be scared to death. The additional fear that I have no way of fixing the problem would be even worse. I would like to think that I would not strike out with an act of violence, but let us be honest, survival is a strong instinct.

The conditions of our inner-cities is a picture of what is wrong with America. Our policies have not made life better in our inner-cities for the six decades of my life. Yet we have not done anything different in those sixty years. Maybe we should try something new. And, maybe we should include those that live in the inner-cities in developing and implementing those new ideas.

In summary, BLM does not exist because cops are shooting black people, it exists because we have created a “system” that does not do anything to improve the conditions of economically disadvantaged people. We have tried to make things better. Over and over, and over for at least sixty years. It’s time for some new ideas.

In a future post, I will lay out some ideas for what we should do to make things better. My ideas will be only that, ideas for the effected people to take a look at and work with their communities to see if they are helpful and capable of being implemented. They will also be for all Americans to ponder - to see what we would be willing to do to make America better.