Black Star Magazine’s Response to “Which Lives Matter?”

W.E.B. Du Bois once asked, “What does honesty do in the face of deception?” Today, I, along with my cohorts at Black Star Magazine, ask a very similar question. What do opinions do in the face of facts? In the Opinion section of The Emory Wheel, an article titled “Which Lives Matter?” presents a rather grotesque and factually inaccurate portrait of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement. Though it is difficult to discern whether the uninformed opinion of the author is representative of a larger population of the Emory community or if it is the lone result of poor evidence-based research, it is still necessary that we examine and scrutinize the author’s claims for the sake of reeducating the Emory community.

By unearthing the facts of BLM, we wish to reveal to the Emory community that, in the face of facts, opinions should become informed. With properly informed opinions, members of the Emory community can exhume the true nature and objectives of BLM from underneath the rubble of falsity in which the “Which Lives Matter?” piece has buried them. Editorials in the Wheel should be guided by the spirit of empiricism and the will to “stand by what is good.” This article was led by neither. We hope to wisely follow both.

In summation, the author believes that BLM has a double conscious. She argues that BLM is both a statement and a movement. BLM as a political movement, she reasons, aims to defund law enforcement, put police through awareness programs and force them to wear body cameras, demilitarize police equipment and circulate hatred toward white people and cops. As a statement, she argues, BLM is about discontinuing a culture in America that values White lives more than Black lives and practices color-conscious policing. She concludes that it’s up to all people to end racial prejudice and that governmental policy, though likely effective, will not solve the problem of systematic racism in America. In spite of presenting some true assessments of BLM, the author fails to fully grasp the fundamental philosophy of BLM and its goals to the degree that it is evident that facts seemingly don’t matter in the article.
Did facts matter when the author concluded that BLM can manifest itself as a circulator of hate and retribution against White people? Apparently not. The author’s journey to this conclusion is hazy at best, so please follow this analysis of her line of reasoning closely. The author creates a theoretical scenario in which someone dismisses her article as a “White girl’s response to a problem she doesn’t understand.” Though this fictitious response is her own creation, she somehow uses it to support the idea that “we don’t want to unify” and BLM promotes “generalized hatred.” She says this is her singular problem with BLM but seems to forget that she fabricated the dismissive response in the first place. Her response was not, in any way, representative of BLM’s platform. BLM is primarily focused on cop-to-citizen relationships, not citizen-to-citizen relationships. Cops have state-sanctioned powers to detain, arrest and kill people. BLM, like practically all Black movements that have taken place in America’s history, has a problem when cops abuse this power when dealing with people who have melanin in their skins. BLM has nothing to do with White people or White cops — it relates to all cops and the White supremacy reinforcing culture that police culture, as a subculture of American society, has historically possessed and still holds on to. Black cops can possess a White supremacy reinforcing worldview that may lead them to abuse their power when dealing with people of color. Leaders of BLM have frequently referenced “White supremacy” as a target, not “White people.” Finally, every single BLM goal that the author lists early in the article has to do with police forces as a whole. There is absolutely no reference to White people, White cops or White police forces in BLM’s policy objectives. Interestingly, the only evidence of racial bias toward White people in the article is the author’s own stereotyping of her name as a White name. Her name-stereotyping is also racially biased in general, because it implies that certain names are carried by certain people because of their ethnic identity. It seems the author forgot that most African Americans carry European names as a result of slavery. For example, my last name is Greer and means an Irish or a Scottish goat farmer, both of which I am not.

Did facts matter when the author chose to ignore a core piece of BLM’s goal to defund certain law enforcement agencies? We doubt it. The article criticizes that BLM wants to defund police forces, without mentioning that BLM actually wants to take funds away from police and reallocate those funds toward the creation of jobs, the development of better education systems, the cultivation of healthy foods and the construction of better housing in Black communities. Co-founder of BLM and Fulbright Scholar Patrisse Cullors says public safety is not limited to policing but also repairing Black communities at their damaged roots. Cullors understands that the current state of Black communities is the direct result of centuries of structural warfare against Black Americans by various U.S. governmental agencies and private businesses from the local to the national level. Cullors understands that policing the effects of poverty rather than alleviating poverty itself is a totally ineffective way to approach rebuilding Black communities. That is likely why Cullors reached the following conclusion: “We can’t keep pouring money into our police departments as our only way for public safety. Public safety means people having good jobs, people having a place to live, people having access to healthy food.” For these reasons, it is clear that the author’s omission of this very important aspect of defunding police agencies is misleading and faulty journalism.

Did facts matter when the author neglected to differentiate between institutional racism and personal racism? Of course not. The author provides examples of personal racism when discussing an organization that is actually concerned with institutional racism, specifically in police departments. She discusses how some people, and even herself, make personal decisions to sit with certain people at lunch but obviously doesn’t understand that this form of personal prejudice is not the equivalent of, for instance, a police department choosing to racially profile Black citizens who drive certain vehicles. One form of prejudice has been institutionalized, while the other is merely the result of one’s personal choice. Institutional racism can have intergenerational effects that transcend a White man calling my frat brother and me “Black mother fuckers” at the Chevron off of Clairmont last year. This verbal attack will not affect my children’s likelihood of getting an education but racist public policies can. Blatant acts of institutionalized racism have run rampant in America against Black Americans for hundreds of years and are still felt in our communities. Metaphorically speaking, the author is at a shooting range and shoots someone else’s target dead on the mark and then rejoices for being a sharp shooter. No, the author actually missed the mark by a long shot.
Did facts matter when the author concludes that governmental policies won’t have much of an effect on societal racism? Nope. First, it is factually incorrect. The public’s response to The New Deal and more recently the Affordable Healthcare Act are solid pieces of evidence that support the idea that policy can change public opinion. These are just two examples among countless others. Second, if the author were correct, her criticism of BLM would still be unwarranted. BLM has chosen a subculture to target, which it has a right to do, and even states that it wants to institute cultural awareness training for police agencies. In addition, the author’s criticism of BLM is structurally equivalent to arguing that activists who demand policies concerning equal pay for women in the workplace are ineffective because those policies won’t affect sexism in our larger society. Even more simply, this is like criticizing an organization that wants to Adopt-a-Mile because that organization won’t adopt the entirety of I-20.

All in all, the author’s conclusion is belittling of BLM’s objectives and clearly illogical. The perpetuation of such misinformed ideas cannot be tolerated, as it is damaging to the progression of the BLM movement and the Emory community. While opinions are to be respected, future pieces should contain adequate contextual knowledge before attempting to discredit an entire movement.

TJ Greer is a College senior from Huntsville, Alabama writing on behalf of Black Star Magazine.

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