Dig deeper and you’ll find that “ending oppression” or “empowerment” aren’t quite what you might imagine they mean
Everyone can agree that the oppression of human beings by others is bad, and that human life is sacred. Everyone can also agree that throughout Western history, there have been countless examples of atrocities committed, very often racially motivated.
No one, either, can deny the role of the British Empire in this. Nor can anyone deny that, across the West today, certain communities still face disadvantages that others would not wish to have themselves.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a movement, we all know, that started in the US in response to the killing of African American men at the hands of the police. And now it is here, too. There are myriad reasons as to why this is, which we could argue over until we are blue in the face. But something that is rarely discussed is what the movement aspires to. What does BLM want?
On the face of it, very few people can disagree with the title. Do black lives matter? Yes, of course. Even those who respond “all lives matter” cannot deny it. So straight out of the blocks, people may feel inclined to stop examining the movement there. Only a racist would say that black lives specifically do not matter, and that they weren’t opposed to people being mistreated as a result of their ethnicity, after all.
But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that “ending oppression” or “empowerment” aren’t quite what you might imagine they mean.
In 2016, the US BLM campaign released ten demands as part of a manifesto, almost all to do with changing police practices in the US — things like increasing the number of minorities in community police forces to better reflect their ethnic make up, and the introduction of body cameras for officers to ensure acts of brutality would be caught on tape. Beyond those two, few of the points were or are applicable to the way policing is conducted in the UK. But the movement has morphed since then. Today, segments of BLM don’t want to change the police: They want to defund it. Some actively want forces abolished.
Today, BLM’s sites are deliberately vague on what, exactly, they want. There’s a reason for that: If policy isn’t revealed in any great detail, and aims are kept opaque, broadly based on catchy slogans everyone in principal agrees with, it makes it harder to examine, and to criticise, what a political movement wants.
But the official GoFundMe page set up to support BLM in the UK moves beyond the idea that its adherents just want a different approach to policing, or for society to remain the same but with a level playing field for all regardless of background.
It claims to be committed to “dismantling imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures that disproportionately harm black people.”
That’s quite a leap from what the movement originally asked for — and is a full marathon from what a lot of ordinary Brits may have in mind when aligning themselves with what they imagine is the continuation of the civil rights movement. This is no such thing: It actively calls for the dismantling of the state and the system it operates within. Don’t be fooled when it tries to only single out the structures that hurt ethnic minorities: In the past week, even the NHS, staffed to the brim with ethnic minorities, has been
branded institutionally racist. When they say “dismantle state structures,” they mean the lot.
Suddenly, it begins to change the way one looks at the activities of the past few days, with hammer and sickle emblems daubed all over London’s monuments, and suggestions that, following the defenestration of the statue of Colston in Bristol, that those of the likes of Robert Peel, Earl Grey and, for some reason, Harold Wilson, should follow suit. It is no longer about police brutality, either here or in the US. It isn’t even, really, about racism. It is about regime — the regime itself is racist, and so the whole thing must go.
The UK BLM movement, like its US counterpart, also actively calls for the “abolition of police.” That is a line, I think, almost no one here wishes to cross, especially when it is proposed by people who have no qualms about attacking others or committing acts of vandalism. The
Old Bill may be going down an ineffective path of bully-boy tactics and language policing, but we still need murderers and terrorist apprehended by someone. Who else is going to do it? The abstract idea of the community?
It also pledges to use some of the funds it raises on education; but will it go towards helping people from impoverished ethnic minority communities in the UK learn trades? Enter the professions? Help them empower themselves by being able to earn a good living, lifting themselves and their families of their predicaments, and help forge a better society? You know, education? Or by “education” does it mean spread more of the ideology at play, recruiting more converts to the cause, which seeks conflict and change over dialogue and reform?
There is inequality in the UK. There is prejudice, and there are things to be done. But somehow, I’m not sure our nation is so bad that it warrants being torn down and started all over again by a movement with such aims at its core.
