By now, many are aware that Black lives Matter leader(s), Patrice Cullors, has been exposed for financial corruption. Recently, buying a $6 million dollar mansion, all the while leaving local chapters of the movement bankrupt. It is the reason the word successful has quotations around it. For some, it is cause for saying "I told you so!" For others, there is a genuine feeling of disappointment and frustration. Regardless of one's attitude towards BLM, no one can deny that it was a force to be reckoned with in the last eight years. But why? What made Black Lives Matter successful?
Common Enemy
With any movement, militia, or gang, to wage a “culture war,” there must be a common enemy. Whether it’s an idea, a country, a person, or a political party, soldiers must know who they are fighting. Even if they don’t know why they are fighting. With BLM, their enemy was initially a bit confusing because it began as a hashtag.
Shortly after George Zimmerman was acquitted of shooting Trayvon Martin, activist Alicia Garza posted on Facebook, “Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter, Black Lives Matter.” A friend of hers, Patrice Cullors, took the last 3 words of the post and made it a hashtag. And on March 27th, 2013, #blacklivesmatter was born. Immigrant rights activist Opal Tometti created social media platforms for the hashtag, bringing a variety of people together who were unified in their concerns for injustice toward black people.
Black Lives Matter's popularity grew in the summer of 2014 beginning with the death of Eric Garner. In a verbal clash with police, he was caught on camera being choked to death by officer Daniel Pantaleo. His last words were, “I can’t breathe.” Officer Pantaleo, though fired five years later, never received any criminal charges. It was that reality that ignited the majority of supporters. And the first of the two main common enemies were identified; police and the system that seemingly allows them to use excessive force with “qualified immunity.” The stage was set and the enemy was clear after Mike Brown was shot and killed by officer Darren Wilson.
While people opposed to Black Lives Matter, rightly at times, blamed anti-police sentiment on the organization’s Marxist framework. But there was a deeper issue at play that contributed to people supporting Black Lives Matter. For many people, particularly large segments of the black community, there is a deep, historically rooted, lack of trust in law enforcement. And, for the criminal justice system. There are a variety of reasons as to why, but one took center stage and caused further division between those who supported BLM and those who disbelieved them.
Police brutality
Police brutality is the most misunderstood word In the English language, as it relates to segments of the black community’s struggles, and large swaths of white conservatives who disbelieve the genuineness of that struggle. This dynamic is hardly new. But there was one study that was used to disprove what BLM claimed about policing. But what came out of the study was that police brutality means different things to blacks and whites.
Roland Fryer is an American economist and a Harvard professor. In July 2016 he released his, “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force,” study. Roland and his team looked at millions of data points, making his study the most comprehensive study on the issue of the police, and the potential for racist actions towards black people. On Coleman Hughes’ podcast which aired on YouTube on June 6th, 2022, Coleman asked Roland to reflect on his findings.
“When it comes to lethal use of force, where we collected data from 18 cities, we found no racial differences whatsoever in lethal force. That is the part that everyone focuses on.”
Backed by millions of findings, the data disrupts the narrative that black people are disproportionately killed by police. Conservatives ate this data point up. They now had real-time statistical information from a black Harvard professor, trusted in his field, that supported their view, that BLM and their systemic racist claims were bogus. And, those black people are indeed playing the victim, yet again. If that was all Roland Fryer’s report said, they’d be right. But that data point is not the full story.
“On lower-level uses of force, there are large racial differences in the use of force. So, in the aggregate of the data, if you don't do anything to it, you don't touch it, black people are 53 percent more likely to have force used on them at a given stop. If you control for a bunch of stuff, that number reduces but it never goes away…The most striking finding to me is that when folks are pulled over by the police, and the police themselves report that they are fully compliant; they're not arrested, there's no contraband, and nothing went wrong. According to the police, black people are still 25 times more likely to have force used on them…We put the data through some really serious statistical tests. We really believe that's bias, these aren't just disparities this is real bias.”
These findings revealed that there are two different understandings of the problem. For many conservatives, blacks are not experiencing higher murder rates by police, so the sentiment is to stop complaining and start complying. For many blacks, police brutality never meant murders only, but included the threat of murder. Things like: being slammed on police cars, handcuffed tighter than necessary. Having a gun pointed at you knowing that the slightest move could make the officer “feel for his safety” which allows him to take your life. Unnecessary verbal abuse, and unusually long detainment in hopes to find something to make an arrest. There were so many other findings that Roland Fryer ended that segment on the podcast with a sober evaluation of the data.
“They (conservatives) don't focus on the thousands and thousands of use of force incidents that happen in lower level uses of force. And you know of course Black Lives Matter, but you know I believe black dignity matters as well...Isn't that potentially a very important thing to solve? Because it happens so often, and it goes to the very core of trust, and relationships between minorities and police departments in the cities that need them the most.”
This is what many people who supported BLM were marching for. It wasn’t simply the killings of unnamed black men. It was the consistent brutality of police that was being protested, and the lack of consequences when law enforcement officers cross the line. Conservatives focused on murders alone. But many in the black community are talking about the brutality that stewards a lack of trust of police stemming from those “thousands and thousands of use of force incidents that happen all the time.”
Conservatives were so blinded by the political ideology of BLM, that they missed the reality of the anthropology that BLM was drawing attention to. Conservative Christians missed the Imago Dei component of the phrase Black Lives Matter and as a result, attacked the validity of the phrase, and Roland Fryer’s data, too politically.
Conservatives pushed back with black-on-black crime stats, and accusations of a political nature describing the issues as a leftist Marxist agenda (which was also true in many respects). But this only fueled, in the minds of those who supported Black Lives Matter, legitimacy to the claim of white privilege and white supremacy. Thereby, making the next reason why Black Lives Matter’s success came easier.
Systematic Undervaluation
Implicit in the phrase black lives matter is the idea that black people are undervalued in America. Not that every black person is undervalued, but those in poorer communities where the excessive force incidents from police happen. Conservatives fired back with stats about black-on-black crime, abortion, fatherlessness, and the fact many blacks vote democrat, as the main problems in the black community, not police. There is a lot of truth to these claims but there is also some hypocrisy. One example is something conservatives probably did not mean to do, but they couldn’t help themselves.
On June 19, 2020, Larry Elder released a documentary called, “Uncle Tom: An Oral History of the American Black Conservative.” The documentary was largely ignored by leftist media outlets but did very well among conservatives. The documentary boasted some of the most high-profile black conservatives in the country.
One of the most important moments in the documentary was just under 4 minutes long and came at 1:24:44 —1:28:34. What was said here, whether conservatives meant to or not, is part of the reason BLM was successful. Below are direct quotes from many high-profile black conservatives. And where possible, names associated with those quotes will appear. Italics are mine.
Robert Woodson Sr.- Founder and President of the Woodson Center
“Blacks are protesting the fact that for the last 50 years, they are living in cities that are the most dangerous, disinvested places, and they have been run by liberal black democrats. But they’ve got no alternative to express that discontent.”
Carol Swain- Associate Professor at Princeton & Vanderbilt Universities/Co-chairwoman for President Trump’s 1776 Commission
“First they (Republicans) have to be serious about whether they want minorities in the party. And if they are, they need to totally rethink how they’re going about it.”
“My experiences running as a mayoral candidate in a city that’s predominantly democrat, I’ve been criticized by Republican strategists for spending my time in minority communities…I have not found the kind of support that I expected from republicans…When I’ve gone to campaign and elections meetings, I hear the strategists say, “don’t waste your time in minority communities, you need to hunt where the ducks are.”
Allen West- Former Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas
“That’s the fault of the Republican Party, they have just completely said, “eh, we can’t connect with them, and they gave up…Republicans have been their own worst messengers.”
Larry Elder-Talk Radio host, author of books such as 2008’s “Stupid Black Men: How to Play the Race Card and Lose.” Creator of The Uncle Tom documentary
“For years the Democratic Party had assumed they’re going to get 90-95% of the black vote. As did the Republican Party. They didn’t even try. Republicans have convinced themselves that blacks are unalterably democrats. There’s nothing we can do about it. Let’s husband our money and our energy, and just spend it where we think we can get votes.”
Stephen Broden- Former Republican political candidate from Texas’ 30th congressional district/pastor
“The Republican Party ignores us because they believe a narrative that has been pushed out into the public square that the black community is a monolith. So we’re being ignored on both sides.”
Unknown quote: “The black community is low-hanging fruit for the Republican Party. And the fact that they’re not making a more concerted effort to message aggressively to our community is a huge mistake.”
Rob Smith- Rising star as in Republican Party/black conservative
“You’re not going to be able to sell your ideas and your theories, and your thoughts to the people, if you’re doing things in the same way that you have done them for the last 20-30 years.”
All the energy criticizing and insulting the intelligence of black people for voting democrat comes to a head with these quotes. And a very important distinction also became clear in that segment of the documentary. Black people vote Democrat not because they simply believe in their values, but because they know that Republicans don’t value them. BLM knew this. Many blacks who supported BLM did so because of this. The Democrats, at least, pretend to care about black people. And when you have been marginalized, mistreated, and misunderstood for so long, someone pretending to care is better than trusting people, who themselves have said, they don’t care.
This reality is what made BLM the most successful. And every critique from conservatives, especially black conservatives like Candace Owens and Larry Eider, fell on a lot of deaf ears. Not because what they say about the democrats is false. But because what black people have said about the Republicans is true. The irony that black people have to announce that “they don’t fit the narrative,” so that they can be accepted by white people is a case in point. It’s racialization working in their favor because it bows to assimilation. And that truth is what makes black people use the classification of coon or Uncle Tom. This is more of what many blacks mean by white supremacy. It’s not the violence of the KKK. It’s the silence of the RNC. Black Lives Matter capitalized on this and brought to light another reality that made them successful.
Systematic Wounds
Many of us are so triggered by the word systemic that you may have missed that I said systematic wounds not systemic. Systemic deals more with a complete, total, comprehensive system. Systematic deals with the parts, and the actions within a system. Most of the discussion on systemic racism and its current viability would’ve benefited from this distinction. But that’s for another time. Needless to say, a lot of the success of BLM hinged on systematic wounds, three in particular, that many in the black community feel. What’s changed is that many white have people started to feel those wounds too.
Belittled Trauma
There are always competing narratives as to the challenges facing the black community. On one side you'll hear structural/systemic racism. On the other side, you'll hear fatherlessness, black-on-black crime, and inherited redneck culture. Both sides are right to some degrees. But in our highly politicized moral high-ground ideological debates, the issue is who is more right? One element of this debate is the word trauma. Which, is another term that has been put in the "playing the victim" category, rather than a valid explanation contributing to the lack of trust described above. Trauma does not minimize personal culpability. But it is not simply an excuse either. In many other circumstances such as rape, soldiers coming home from war, or the loss of a loved one, trauma is a reasonable explanation for challenges that people face in this life.
In the New York Times best-selling author Bessel Van Der Kolk's book, "The Body Keeps The Score" some significant and eye-opening insights are given. Bessel Van Der Kolk is the founder and medical director of the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is also a professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine and director of the National Complex Trauma Treatment Network. This means he knows more about trauma than most of us know about anything. Here are a few insights from his book. Italics are mine.
p. 13 "Trauma, whether it is the result of something done to you or something you yourself have done, almost always makes it difficult to engage in intimate relationships. After you have experienced something so unspeakable, how do you learn to trust yourself or anyone else again? Or, conversely, how can you surrender to an intimate relationship after you have been brutally violated?
p.21 "We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present. Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way the mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think. We have discovered that helping victims of trauma find the words to describe what has happened to them is profoundly meaningful, but usually, it is not enough. The act of telling the story doesn't necessarily alter the automatic physical and hormonal responses of bodies that remain hypervigilant, prepared to be assaulted or violated at any time. For real change to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present."
p.45 "When something reminds traumatized people of the past, their right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present. But because their left brain is not working very well, they may not be aware that they are re-experiencing and reenacting the past--they are just furious, terrified, enraged, ashamed, or frozen. After the emotional storm passes, they may look for something or somebody to blame for it. They behaved the way they did because you were ten minutes late, or because you burned the potatoes, or because you "never listen to me." Of course, most of us have done this from time to time, but when we cool down, we hopefully can admit our mistake. Trauma interferes with this kind of awareness, and, over time, our research demonstrated why."
This book is a goldmine for anyone wanting to understand the effects of trauma on our minds and bodies. This book was not written in any way shape or form to discuss race, politics, or anything of the sort. This is why I thought it to be relevant to this discussion. There is also relevance to "Epigenetics, the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Unlike genetic changes, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change your DNA sequence, but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence." Translation: traumas experienced (and inherited by a parent) cause real and lasting, though not permanent, effects on the way our bodies react to the world around us. With this in mind, there are two reasons I used the quotes from "The Body Keeps The Score."
The first reason is, that trauma is often seen as an excuse rather than a physiological reality. This often happens because of monolithism. As Stephen Broder described above, it's thinking that black people are all the same. This is often the case when the criminal actions of some within the black community are attributed to the characteristics of the entire black community. But this also happens when some in the black community don't fit the narrative of the black struggle. Monolithism then says since some don’t fit the narrative, there is no narrative. Therefore, it must be an excuse, an example of victimology. But if we're not monolithic, how can we say that many are playing the victim simply because some don't fit the narrative? The insights from the book show us that trauma and its consequences are real. We all react to trauma differently, some do better than others. And though there are definitely people playing the victim, it cannot be taken seriously that many are doing so. To say that is to insult science.
The physiological difficulty in establishing and maintaining intimate relationships is much deeper than inherited culture. I know firsthand how tough it is in inner-city communities to have and show love. The loss of loved ones happens so often, that hardening one’s heart is a mode of survival. When the hormones in our bodies keep us hypervigilant, aggression is not simply a matter of inherited cultural rebellion. According to Van Der Kolk, it’s often an expression of trauma. Again, this does not excuse or minimize evil behaviors in any community. But it does show that the situation is more complicated than upbringing and playing the victim.
The second reason is the perpetuation of the idea of chattel slavery. The laws have definitely changed but it is possible to keep the attitude alive. Chattel simply means cattle. Black people were treated like, and in some cases worse than chattel for a vast majority of our time in colonial and established America. But that's not the point I'm making. The ideology of chattel slavery comes in the form of dismissing the psychological impact (traumatic imprint) left on many black people after years of going against the grain. Mainly, invalidating our emotions, and treating black people as if we’re not human. Acting as if something that happened a long time ago has no emotional impact on black people today. Even more so with the dismissal of the traumatic imprint felt by many in the black community after MLK’s assassination.
In an article written for the grio, an online webzine titled, "What impact did King’s assassination have on the Black community?" Writer David Love chronicles some of the sentiments of prominent black leaders in the 60s and their response to MLK's murder. "Further, the loss of Dr. King was a devastating blow to the civil rights movement, raising questions about the effectiveness of nonviolence. On the night of the assassination, Floyd McKissick, director of the Congress of Racial Equality, proclaimed that nonviolence was a “dead philosophy” because white racists killed it.
When white America killed Dr. King last night, she declared war on us. It would have been better if she had killed Rap Brown … or Stokely Carmichael,” said Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael, later known as Kwame Ture. “But when she killed Dr. King, she lost it … He was the one man in our race who was trying to teach our people to have love, compassion, and mercy for white people.”
Professor Kevin Cokely in another article added, "News of King’s assassination reverberated across the entire world, with condolences coming from heads of state and world leaders. The nation had not been so deeply impacted since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Black people, now angered and emboldened by such a heinous act of violence, engaged in weeks of rioting and urban rebellion that disrupted the country."
History.com's coverage of the impact of King's murder stated, "Though Black and white people alike mourned King’s passing, the killing in some ways served to widen the rift between Black and white Americans, as many Black people saw King’s assassination as a rejection of their vigorous pursuit of equality through the nonviolent resistance he had championed. His murder, like the killing of Malcolm X in 1965, radicalized many moderate African American activists, fueling the growth of the Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s."
"In a 1966 Gallup poll, more than 60 percent of the public rated King more negatively than positively. After King was assassinated, two-thirds of Americans said their strongest reaction to his death had been sadness, anger, shame, or fear, another survey found. Another 31 percent, however, said they “felt he brought it on himself.” Huffington Post reported this in an article on the 50th anniversary of MLK’s death.
The scope of this article doesn't allow me to develop the impact of the FBI's COINTELPRO, the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights, and their own "do not snitch" rule. The lasting negative implication of things like redlining, the birth of the religious right (a Christian white conservative republican movement) whose origin has been linked to anger at the government for imposing the integration of black students into white Christian colleges. Nor is it the scope of this article to talk about why poor whites are often not included in the discussion, but that poor is almost always designated to black people. Blacks are criticized heavily for "not making it." But there are millions of poor white people that did not "make it" either. And if JD Vance hadn't released his must-read book, "Hillbilly Elegy," we still wouldn't be talking about them.
The point here is also not to dissuade anyone from thinking that segments of black culture are in fact problematic. Or that trauma alone is the reason for such outlandish crimes. It's not. There is a cultural component within segments of the black community that has given a bad name to the community itself. Sadly, at one point in my life, I contributed to that dynamic. The aim here was to give some reasons as to why Black Lives Matter was successful in bringing the race conversation to the international spotlight. And, to explain why even after they announced their Marxist ideology publicly, people were still committed.
It wasn't simply allegiance to leftist ideology or a newfound love for Karl Marx and CRT. Most people still don't know what that stuff means. A lot of it is this, people believe in the American Dream. So much so, that they think everyone should have it. But the people most responsible for establishing and preserving it (white men) would not allow people to have access to it for a long time. And then blamed those people for not attaining it. What we're seeing right now is not the left versus the right. It’s dream versus dream. It's an application of the American Dream versus millions of other applications of it. It’s individual not political. And the cultural tug of war, is over who do you trust? Unfortunately, because of the historical sins of white men, they are no longer trusted to determine what and who has access to the American Dream.
Whiteness, for the first time in American history, is under attack. And now many of them know what it feels like to be scrutinized just because of their skin color. As Jesus once said, “ Matthew 7:2 For you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you will be measured by the same measure you use. As a result, black people aren't the only ones saying their lives that don't matter. Today, white conservatives are essentially saying the same thing. This is America.
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twitter: @imcurtkennedy
thanks for spelling it all out. facts. I know you didn't go into the spiritual implications much here, but they are staggering. thanks too for bringing in the trauma aspect. and I learned a new term: epigenetics. sounds a bit like "generational curses" or iniquity. this concept is important for us as believers to examine in our own lives, as well in the lives of groups. we all need inner healing. we all need a savior. Jesus is the only way!