Let’s start off with a declaration: While I do admire the exposure that Black Lives Matter (BLM) has put on the issue of police brutality across the United States, and while I do not feel BLM deserves much of the skepticism and discredit that many on the right and even the Revolutionary Left have heaped upon it, I also do not consider myself a hardcore “BLM supporter”.
I have my critiques of the organization and, occasionally, of its founders. I do not always agree with their strategy. My perspective is more Pan-Afrikan and, as such, calls for less of a “hands up don’t shoot” petitioner’s approach to the pursuit of social justice. I believe that a person’s sexual orientation is that person’s own business, and as such I do not keep a scorecard as to whether some or all of BLM’s core founders — Alicia Garza, April Tometti and Patrisse Cullors — consider themselves lesbians, queer, LGBTQ, or not. I do believe that a Black organization should consider itself Black first, and sexual orientation and gender identification should be separate from that Black organization’s list of central issues, particularly so that conflicts between the Black Agenda and the so-called “Gay Agenda” do not occur. I have my concerns about the recent financial allegations against Ms. Cullors and the degree to which they might indicate a betrayal of the grassroots revolutionary leftist principles that drew so many people to BLM’s aggressive in-your-face style of protest.
But I do believe the organization is involved in important work for social justice. I do believe that many of the discussions that are taking place today would not have occurred had it not been for BLM. I do believe that BLM has an important place in the overall Movement For Black Lives, as long as they can remain consistent with the core beliefs that brought them into existence. And I will not embrace some of the smear attacks against them that have been launched by right-wing ideologues, Web sites and media outlets just so I can flex my Revolutionary muscles, thumb my nose at Black elites or buck up my Straight Black Male Cred. There. I’ve made my declaration. Now on to the point of this article.
This is the full statement that was recently removed from BLM’s “What We Believe” page on their Website (https://blacklivesmatter.com/), according to a Fox News article (https://www.foxnews.com/media/black-lives-matter-disrupt-nuclear-family-website):
“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.”
How did Fox News get away with distorting that statement (which they had included, in full, in their article) into a call to “disrupt” the “nuclear family structure” in its headlines? Did they know that most readers will stop at the headline and not read the full statement, or at least not think and comprehend what the statement actually says? Apparently they were counting on it, so as to build cynicism among the community based on a right-wing talking point.
This comes at the same time that Rashad Turner, the reported founder of BLM-St. Paul, published a video (“The Truth Revealed About BLM”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wncYj2xfV6A) that claims he learned an “ugly truth” about BLM’s commitment to Black education and the Black family, in which he repeated the misleading quote “We disrupt the nuclear family structure” and he also made this statement:
“I believed the organization stood for exactly what the name implies – Black lives do matter. However, after a year on the inside, I learned they had little concern for rebuilding Black families … And they cared even less about improving the quality of education for students in Minneapolis. That was made clear when they publicly denounced charter schools alongside the teachers’ union. … I was an insider in Black Lives Matter and I learned the ugly truth – the moratorium on charter schools does not support rebuilding the Black family. But it does create barriers to a better education for Black children.”
Fox News was quick to jump on this opportunity in a June 1 article by Sam Dorman, Former BLM leader sounds off on group’s ‘ugly truth’ (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/former-blm-leader-sounds-off-on-group-s-ugly-truth/ar-AAKBbRK?ocid=msedgntp):
Turner’s video, published to YouTube last week, highlighted how the group’s website stated that it wanted to “disrupt the nuclear family structure.” …
“And they cared even less,” Turner added, “about improving the quality of education for students in Minneapolis. That was made clear when they publicly denounced charter schools alongside the teachers’ union.”
“I was an insider in Black Lives Matter and I learned the ugly truth – the moratorium on charter schools does not support rebuilding the Black family. But it does create barriers to a better education for Black children.”
Apparently, the video was published by “a Black-people-led organization TakeCharge, whose ideals reject critical race theory and woke culture, writes The Daily Wire.” (https://meaww.com/rashad-turner-blm-founder-quit-movement-insider-learned-ugly-truth-wanted-to-be-cop-take-charge)
The organization TakeCharge Minnesota (https://takechargemn.com/) states this on their main page:
TakeCharge is a new organization committed to countering the prevailing narrative in popular culture that America is structured to undermine the lives of black Americans. Kendall Qualls will lead TakeCharge with the objective to inspire and educate the black community and other minority groups in the Twin Cities to take charge of their own lives, the lives of the families and communities as citizens fully granted to them in the Constitution.
We acknowledge that racist people exist in the country, but explicitly reject the notion that the United States of America is a racist country. This is a subtle, but significant difference!
We also denounce the idea that the country is guilty of systemic racism, white privilege and abhor the concept of identity politics and the promotion of victimhood in minority communities.
Mr. Qualls has been a rather frequent guest on Fox News to discuss his criticism of BLM, Critical Race Theory and other initiatives that he believes wrongly depict the United States as a racist country. Mr. Turner, meanwhile, appears to have moved rather suddenly from a leader of BLM-style street protest against the system to an embrace of the more “conservative” (I actually consider that word a misnomer, but more on that in another commentary) approach of Black organizations like TakeCharge, seeking to establish their bona fides as good, patriotic Americans. His video, however, which is billed as some sort of “expose” of the corruption of BLM, smacks more of opportunism than simple political or philosophical difference.
If Mr. Turner no longer believes in BLM’s tactics and wants to follow a more “conservative” strategy centered on the nuclear family and charter schools, fine. If he wants to align himself with TakeCharge and the Minnesota Parent Union to accomplish goals that are more in line with his personal political beliefs, fine. If he wants more of a “family values” approach that rejects Critical Race Theory and “woke” politics, fine. But what was the point of publishing the video on the way out the BLM door if not to discredit the organization and curry favor with more “conservative” interests?
BLM, as well as a number of other progressive-minded activist organizations (including some that are BLM critics), oppose charter schools because they have been the harbingers of efforts to defund the public schools upon which so many poor students depend, and they push for increasing the funding for public schools and better pay for teachers instead. But “conservatives”, motivated by notions of competition among schools and a commitment to free-market Capitalist principles, have expended much political capital (pun intended) in branding progressive groups as Socialist and un-American. This goes for the opposition to charter schools as well as the teaching of Critical Race Theory and The 1619 Project (“They’re teaching children to hate America”).
Mr. Turner’s apparent uncritical support for charter schools, despite the issues many Afrikan-centered educators have faced in dealing with the boards that control the charter schools’ funding, and the questions concerning what effect the proliferation of charter schools was having on the educational prospects of those students who could not meet the requirements for admission into those charter schools, makes one wonder about the degree to which he may have been influenced by right-wing interests such as those who still dominate media outlets like Fox News. His willingness to readily interpret “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement” as a plot to “disrupt the nuclear family structure” seems to indicate his tendency to accept that, as well as other, right-wing talking points.
It would appear that his onetime support for BLM, an organization birthed in the aftermath of multiple police killings of Black men, women and children, has now waned as he has found his own Western-influenced beliefs to be in conflict with several of BLM’s core beliefs (which he may have ignored earlier). This seems much more accurate than some sensationalized statement about the “ugly truth” about BLM, which again smacks of a right-wing propaganda hit job best suited for “shock jock” radio or QAnon message boards.
Mr. Turner, if you have always supported charter schools and the Western-imposed “requirement” of a nuclear family, then just say so. If you are a so-called “Black conservative” who only backed BLM because of its opposition to police brutality and have now soured on its other political beliefs, just say so. If you have issues with the sexual orientation of BLM’s leadership, just say so. If you consider co-founder Patrisse Cullors’ financial involvements, which apparently included the purchase of several homes, to be a betrayal of what you thought was a more revolutionary organizational ethos (or simple grassroots ethics), just say so. But your objection to their stance on charter schools and the image of the nuclear family, as though this was some sort of surprise, and this “ugly truth” sensationalism that seems to inform your comments, does not speak well of your commitment to leftist or grassroots activism.
As I stated above, this does not mean that I agree with everything in BLM’s platform or political orientation, or that I reject the work that Mr. Turner and groups like TakeCharge and the Minnesota Parent Union are doing for Black children. But I don’t have to. That’s not the point of organizing and building Black unity. If every activist, every organization or every person agreed on political strategy, there would be only one organization instead of the many thousands that exist today. My issue is less with Mr. Turner’s personal critique of BLM than it is with the way he has expressed it — the “ugly truth” video that really only served as a mask for his expression of “conservative” values that has gotten him some personal exposure and won him favor with right-wing media outlets. We don’t have to agree on everything, but we do need to stop trashing each other in public for our enemies’ entertainment.
As I have stated numerous times, if Black people are to rise up against the repression we continue to face in the United States and around the world, we will have to unify around a key set of core issues that we all hold in common. We will have to ditch our ideological rigidity, kick our personal beefs to the curb, swallow our egos, put our need to personally set every agenda to the side and sit down together to build a more effective resistance and establish a more just society for all of us. There is no room in such work for those of us who will run to the mass media of our oppressor to seek headlines through sensationalist accusations against each other. These are the types of behaviors that destabilize organizations, destroy coalitions and crush movements, often before they have begun to stand up on their own two feet, before they are even able to breathe.
These are critical times for Black people. Right-wing politicians in over 40 states are pushing hard to restrict our ability to vote. Racist attacks are increasing. Objections are being raised across the country to the teaching of America’s racist history, even as atrocities like the Tulsa Massacre and the Red Summer of 1919 are being exposed to many Americans for the first time after a century. White people are increasingly drawing battle lines among themselves over their willingness to support autocrats and marginalize “disadvantaged” communities. The post-COVID economy threatens to make all of that worse. And, as has been stated an untold number of times, “when America has a cold, Black America has pneumonia.” If we as People of Afrikan Descent are to prevent yet another Tulsa Massacre, or even worse, another Red Summer of 1919, we must do better among ourselves.
