TW36

Good section, easy to digest about a complex topic. You do a good job critiquing people who broadly dismissed BLM as having nothing to say or those who dismissed it for racist reasons (some tried to hide their racist undertones and some were overtly racist).

That said, I think there are good faith disagreements to be acknowledged about BLM. From my outsider view, people who align with BLM have a wide variety of views many moderate and some extreme. Two examples come to mind:

  • Police reform vs defund vs abolishment – The people on the police reform side have my attention and sympathy, but the police abolishment generally do not. Who would arrest perpetrators of child abuse? Usually the answer from people who say “abolish the police” is just “the police” but with a different name.
  • Dismantling of capitalism / socialism / Marxism – Not everyone in BLM does this, but there are those that combine BLM and expanding government control (progressive / socialism / Marxism, whatever you want to call it). It’s a legitimate concern to me because I earnestly believe that it would not inherently fix the oppression of minorities. An easy example is the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims in China. Communism did not solve the brutal treatment of that minority population and there are many other examples in communist countries (the Soviet Union and others did this plenty).

Clearly a good thought provoking section because this is my longest comment!