The New Racists

We are living in an era when America is consciously attempting to erase the painful memories of its past. And as in often the case, the past needs to be let go of. It is impossible to climb further up a ladder until we remove our feet from the rung we are on.

However, as human beings often do, we overreact and the solution becomes more painful, harmful and damaging than what we trying to forget.

But we all know, and we usually try to incorporate into our life experiences, the importance of learning lessons from our past. We all do it. We try not to repeat the same mistakes in relationships or business dealings, for example, as we did in the past. We don’t set out to destroy the past but to learn from it. It is what mature adults do. Human progress depends upon it.

But what we are seeing now, as America endeavors to erase the ties we have to our past, especially to those steeped in racism, bigotry and prejudice, is an overreaction, if not overkill.

Rarely a day goes by that I do not see where someone has hand painted on their car window, “Black Lives Matter.” No one disputes that ideal, for in reality all lives matter. But that is not the message BLM supporters are sending.

While everyone has heard of George Floyd, few has heard of Jessica Doty Whitiker, an Indianapolis woman and mother of 24, and a home care nurse, who was a part of a group of people that when confronted by another group of people along the canal, lost her life for her ideal.

Tensions arose between the two groups when someone reportedly used a version of the N-word, offending members of the second group. When one person said, “Black Lives Matter,” either Jessica or someone in Jessica’s group returned the declaration with the affirmation, “All Lives Matter.”

The groups separated without incident but moments later, as Jessica and her fiancé walked under a bridge, shots rang out and Jessica was hit and was declared dead at the hospital. Where was the crime, saying “All Lives Matter?” Should not all lives indeed matter?

Actress Kate Beckinsale criticized someone who had posted “All Lives Matter” in response to Kate’s post about Breonna Taylor who was shot by police in her bed. Kate called it “mean-spirited” as she tried to negate the idea that all lives should matter equally. She explained that "for some people, black lives don’t matter at all,” presuming that because someone choses to remind us that all lives matter, they mean Black lives do not. Are not the lives of Blacks included in the inclusive term “all”? So why get offended, because to some, Blacks and only Blacks, should get top billing now.

The Black Lives Matter Movement has gained traction and some say it has been hijacked by radicals and domestic terrorists. But when you go to the official BLM website, there is very little spoken of racial equality, though one would expect that to be declared as its main goal. In its attempt to to be all inclusive, it makes a special point to lift up the LBGT community and to reject violence inflicted on the Black community “by the state.”

Their “About” section states, “We are guided by the fact that all Black lives matter, regardless of actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression, economic status, ability, disability, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, immigration status, or location. We make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead.

We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence.”

BLM has become a platform to promote equality for “transgender brothers and sisters” although this motive is not publicized along with “racial equality.” As they put it, “We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).”

It further states, “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”

The BLM Movement is apparently also determined to “disrupt” the “nuclear family structure” in favor of the “It takes a village” ideology, ignoring the importance of the family unit in creating both a unified and healthy community and nation. In reality, the Black community aborts more babies than any other race, so their declaration to support the “comfort” of Black parents seems disingenuous at best, hypocritical at worst.

Racial equality seems to take a back seat to the ideology presented here. If any hijacking has been done, it has been done by organizers of BLM themselves under a false pretense of eliminating racism.

We have seen statues of Christopher Columbus, Juan Ponce de Leon, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, General Robert E. Lee, Frederick Douglas, Jefferson Davis and numerous Confederate soldier statues have been vandalized, decapitated or torn down.

When BLM protestors, or more accurately vandals, target Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves, and Frederick Douglas, himself a Black man, abolitionist, activist and a former slave himself who dedicated his life to removing slavery from the American landscape, it is evidence that this is more about erasing our history than it is about social or racial justice.

The BLM Movement is more than a grassroots movement, but is backed by large corporations. Companies like Amazon, who gave $10 million, Microsoft donated $250,000, Unilever gave $350,000, Fitbit, the Atlantic and Warner records and many more have given all totaling millions given to the BLM cause.

Other businesses have pledged to stand with BLM and backed that commitment with donations, Doordash has pledged half a million dollars as has Deckers, Airbnb, Nabisco, Dropbox, and Gatorade.

Once we understand that BLM is as racist an entity as any they are pretending to erase, we see the hypocrisy. It exists for the purpose of promoting Blacks over all others, the very definition of racism, and it is done in radical ways, supported by those, well-meaning or not, who fund their destruction of America, its past and its present.

For all its attempts to erase racism from America’s past, it has dedicated itself to promoting a new form of racism. With the aid of American companies, who claim to have bought into the vison of a new, racist-free America, and are giving their support in the seemingly virtuous attempts to remove racism, they have become devout racists themselves.