I’ve been an outspoken supporter of the #BlackLivesMatter movement for years now, attending events, writing blogs, and posting a sign in my front yard. Over the course of time I’ve been supporting BLM, I’ve had to combat a lot of push back about the movement. Especially when more dramatic protests started happening, like people laying down in streets and shutting down highways. Prior to this, I would often get the video sent to me from the August 2015 Minnesota State Fair of Black Lives Matter marchers chanting “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em up like bacon” in reference to police officers. The accusation being that this represented BLM, so how could I support it?
I would explain to people that actions such as this chant, or like rocks being dropped on police at rallies, or the most dramatic of actions such as the shooting of police officers in Dallas were not “sanctioned” by the official Black Lives Matter movement. That, in any movement, you’re going to have rogue demonstrators who go off the rails and do things not in line with the leadership. You saw this with the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. King’s unwavering commitment to non-violence all the time. When someone got violent, he would clearly communicate that those being violent were not with him and his movement. My assumption is the Black Lives Matter movement was doing the same thing.
My assumption was wrong.
Four weeks ago two friends and I started a new podcast, Choppin it Up: a podcast about race, race & race. Our “topic of the day” in episode 2 was to each give our thumbs up or thumbs down for the official Black Lives Matter movement. While I knew about the “fry ’em up like bacon” chants, the laying in the street and the growing narrative against the movement, I was still prepared to defend it and give it my thumbs up.
Until I, for the first time (that’s on me), visited blacklivesmatter.com and read their official stance on things. The article I read is called 11 Major Misconceptions about the Black Lives Matter Movement. If you want to hear our entire discussion on this you can skip to the 42:36 mark in the podcast episode below:
There were two striking features in this article that have alienated me from Black Lives Matter. The articles lists its 11 misconceptions by posting the misconception in the first sentence, followed by an explanation of why that sentence isn’t true.
2. It’s a leaderless movement. The Black Lives Matter movement is a leaderfull movement. Many Americans of all races are enamored with Martin Luther King as a symbol of leadership and what real movements look like. But the Movement for Black Lives, another name for the BLM movement, recognizes many flaws with this model. First, focusing on heterosexual, cisgender black men frequently causes us not to see the significant amount of labor and thought leadership that black women provide to movements, not only in caretaking and auxiliary roles, but on the front lines of protests and in the strategy sessions that happen behind closed doors. Moreover, those old models leadership favored the old over the young, attempted to silence gay and lesbian leadership, and did not recognize the leadership possibilities of transgender people at all. Finally, a movement with a singular leader or a few visible leaders is vulnerable, because those leaders can be easily identified, harassed, and killed, as was the case with Dr. King. By having a leaderfull movement, BLM addresses many of these concerns. BLM is composed of many local leaders and many local organizations including Black Youth Project 100, the Dream Defenders, the Organization for Black Struggle, Hands Up United, Millennial Activists United, and the Black Lives Matter national network. We demonstrate through this model that the movement is bigger than any one person. And there is room for the talents, expertise, and work ethic of anyone who is committed to freedom.
One of my main arguments to those bashing the more violent and hateful acts done in the name of BLM was, “No there’s leadership! They stand against those things!” As it sadly turns out, quite contrary to what the above paragraph is trying to communicate, there is no leadership at all. I’m sorry, but a “leaderfull” movement means there is no leadership. It means people can do anything and everything they want while holding a “Black Lives Matter” banner and it’s sanctioned. Leadership speaks out against deviant behavior. If everyone is a leader, this is impossible. Leadership is hard, letting people do anything they want is easy.
I really have to scratch my head at bashing Martin Luther King. I could write a lot here, but I won’t. I was really shocked to see this on BlackLivesMatter.com. It seems because Dr. King was a male and cisgender and heterosexual, he is seen as a bad example of leadership not to be replicated. This correlation makes no sense and seems way off agenda to a Black Lives Matter movement. As it turns out, the next “misconception” that lost me ties back into this point about Dr. King…
6. The black church has no role to play. Many know that the black church was central to the civil rights movement, as many black male preachers became prominent civil rights leaders. This current movement has a very different relationship to the church than movements past. Black churches and black preachers in Ferguson have been on the ground helping since the early days after Michael Brown’s death. But protesters patently reject any conservative theology about keeping the peace, praying copiously, or turning the other cheek. Such calls are viewed as a return to passive respectability politics. But local preachers and pastors like Rev. Traci Blackmon, Rev. Starsky Wilson, and Rev. Osagyefo Sekou have emerged as what I call “Movement Pastors.” With their radical theologies of inclusion and investment in preaching a revolutionary Jesus (a focus on the parts of scripture where Jesus challenges the Roman power structure rather than the parts about loving one’s enemies) and their willingness to think of church beyond the bounds of a physical structure or traditional worship, they are reimagining what notions of faith and church look like, and radically transforming the idea of what the 21st-century black church should be.
Again, you see here that because the civil rights movement of the 60’s had black males in leadership, a grounding in the church is to be rejected. This point sets out to prove the black church has a role to play, but all it really does (you see this in the last sentence) is create its own definition of “church” which isn’t church at all. So as it turns out, the true black church actually doesn’t have a role to play. And so much bigger than this, the true Jesus doesn’t have a role to play! It’s one thing to be non-religious, to not make any statement about Jesus or Muhammad or whomever, but it’s a whole other thing to go out of your way to reject someone, Jesus in this case. I was shocked to read, “protesters patently reject any conservative theology about keeping the peace, praying copiously, or turning the other cheek” and “rather than the parts about loving one’s enemies.” This is everything Jesus and Dr. King stood for! Like the church, they’ve just made Jesus into who they want him to be. Jesus doesn’t play that.
This all sickens me.
I realize that Black Lives Matter national organizers don’t really care if a white guy from Lansing is on board with them or not, but there’s a bigger and much more important issue here. As more and more people turn a blind eye and deaf ear to Black Lives Matter, they tragically are going to do the same to the heart of the issues BLM set out to protest. Black lives do matter! Systemic change needs to happen! There is a long culture and history in our nation of police brutality. There needs to be accountability and transparency in our police departments. Mass incarceration needs to stop. White Americans need to understand and empathize with the black American experience. It needs to understood why the net worth of a white family is 13x greater than that of a black family. Both overt racism and systemic racism need to be exposed and dismantled. But as “Fry ’em up like bacon” chants get dismissed, with no one from BLM to stand against these things, the rest of what BLM is trying to accomplish is going to get thrown out with the bathwater. Not only does BLM not speak against those sorts of chants, their website is for them…if you patently reject keeping the peace and turning the other cheek, then you promote and condone violence! What a foolish and ineffective route to take.
This really saddens me. There was so much potential in what Black Lives Matter could have been. (Lowercase) black lives do matter…but will anyone actually listen anymore after BLM inevitably vanishes from the scene?
These issues need advocates.
Advocates who embody the loving, reconciling peace of Jesus the way Dr. King did. Advocates who follow God’s call for justice while also following his call for peace.
I need a new movement to support, but there doesn’t seem to be one out there.
And I need a new yard sign…
(To clarify any confusion, I am disassociated with the official Black Lives Matter movement because I always thought they spoke against violence, but they don’t. They not only allow it, but they directly speak against peaceful solutions, which I can’t support.)
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Noah, I hope you continue to be a passionate voice for these issues. The movement for justice for blacks needs white voices as much as the Women’s Rights movement needs men as advocates. I’m white and the most important thing to me is to hear about the experience of blacks from the people who’ve lived it. But when those who haven’t experienced it can be passionate about it too because of the larger issues involved, that makes the cause resonate.
I don’t understand BLM’s diss of MLK or black male leaders but maybe it has more to do that the 3 people who run the website and founded the movement are all women. No diss on the ladies, just wondering if they’re bringing other issues to the table. I had looked at BLM as the evolution of the civil rights movement rather than a break from it. In terms of having no/all leaders, I agree with you that it is hard to steer a movement without defined leadership. Occupy seemed to die out because of this (as well as ill-defined goals) until Bernie took up the cause again.
“With their radical theologies of inclusion and investment in preaching a revolutionary Jesus (a focus on the parts of scripture where Jesus challenges the Roman power structure rather than the parts about loving one’s enemies)”
Maybe you can shed some light on this. Where in the Bible does Jesus challenge the Roman power structure? What I read is Jesus challenging the power of Jewish religious authority, and it’s a spiritual challenge. I don’t read Jesus ever speaking out against the Roman oppression that the Jews lived under. Maybe it’s a misread, but I don’t think you’d ever see Jesus leading a Jewish Lives Matter protest. He praised a centurion’s faith over what he found in the Jews, and said to give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. The closest thing I read is when he’s before Pilate but he never denounces Roman rule, only declares the truth of his own. Isn’t Jesus’ call to love your enemies as well as your neighbor, and to turn the other cheek in the face of being mistreated, and to go 2 miles when forced to go one as the answer to oppression, isn’t that Jesus’ message to those living under injustice? That God’s truth can bear the blows of injustice and rise vindicated, like in Charleston SC.
I hope you continue to write about it and speak out. Even if BLM becomes too polarizing or ineffective, maybe the cause itself of social justice for blacks can sustain the movement. When I see NFL players kneeling, the first thought coming to mind isn’t BLM but unjust police shootings of blacks. Blacks continue to bear the brunt of the injustice, but hopefully it helps that others speak out, that they’re not alone. It matters to me as a white guy what kind of society I live in, whether it’s just or not.
Hi there JAWG, thanks for your comment! I am just as focused as ever to speak out against injustice done to blacks, that will not change. I just can’t condone violence as a proper response, so thus have to distance myself from BLM.
I almost included that quote about “where Jesus challenges the Roman power structure” in my original post, but felt like it would be piling on. Jesus NEVER does that, that was completely made up by BLM. Which again is sad, that we (and tons of people do this, not just BLM) create versions of Jesus they like and then get people to follow that made-up version. Everything you said in your paragraph is accurate. In fact, go another step and look at Peter, who brings out his sword and slices the Roman soldier’s ear off. Jesus sternly reprimands Peter for this, and puts the guy’s ear back on!
One thing we can get behind as Christians is that the early Christians did not serve the Roman empire and they didn’t serve Caesar as their god, they served God’s Kingdom and Jesus as their God. This is what God them persecuted and martyred by the Romans. So with this, we should not serve America as our empire either. So you can see this in a lot of Jesus’s teachings on the Kingdom of God, but that is ALWAYS in a subversive, gushing-with-love, “last will be first”, peaceful mentality. We are to stand up against the injustices of our earthly kingdom, but to do it on Jesus’s terms, not ours.
Check out our new podcast if you haven’t already: http://www.atacrossroads.net/category/choppin-it-up-podcast/
Hey Noah,
I’m glad you wrote this. I’ve always been on board with what BLM meant to you. However, for a long time I’ve felt like the center of the BLM movement was not something you would want to identify with.
BLM lost me during the riots in Baltimore. I have several black friends from college and I was shocked at what I was seeing on their facebook feeds. My friends weren’t advocating for violence but their friends were and my friends weren’t standing against those messages of violence and revenge. My friends weren’t preaching violence but they never mentioned unity or reconciliation. The only sadness they expressed about Baltimore was that many of the businesses that were being destroyed belonged to black people. If the businesses belonged to white people then they didn’t care. So my Evangelical Christian black friends weren’t interested in unity or reconciliation and not strongly enough opposed to violence and destruction to criticize their friends who were promoting it.
I initially thought that people like me and you represented the center of BLM but what I realized is that we were way off to one end of the spectrum. Yes we were polar opposite of the people shooting cops but we were still a long way from the majority view. Ironically, I always said that BLM doesn’t mean that other lives don’t matter but that a majority of our society is acting as though black lives don’t matter as much as white lives. But what I was seeing was that indeed these people really only believed that black lives mattered.
I still wrestle with how to handle BLM though because I believe flying the BLM flag can still be a good way to open avenues of unity and reconciliation with African American’s in our community.
Hi Lee. Yeah man, I’m definitely in that same wrestle. Every black person I ever talked to around the BLM sign I had in my yard was very appreciative of it. It was obvious they weren’t interested in what stances the official BLM group takes on this or that, but in the general message of racial equality and justice. I could tell they appreciated me, a white guy, being an ally. This is why this article I wrote genuinely makes me sad. I am still praying and brainstorming a way to communicate that black lives matter, without supporting the violence within Black Lives Matter. I can still write and podcast about all the same issues, but as far as supporting BLM events and things like yard signs, that’s tougher.
I still think the moment has potential but is need of serious reform. Unfortunately it seems any attempt at criticism of the movement leads to a mob of people calling you a racist or an uncle tom.
What frustrates me is how so many white people (especially mid-upper class whites) love impulsively jumping on the bandwagon for movements like blm but when it comes time to help mentor inner city kids or stop gang violence, those same white people are nowhere to be found.
With it being “leaderfull” (aka leaderless, in my opinion), reform is impossible. That’s one of the main points I wanted to make. When anything goes, this is the inevitable result, with no ability to steer it back on course.