Black Lives Matter and Martin Luther King Jr

A friend of mine posted an article from the Washington Post talking about the similarities between the tactics encouraged by the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. in particular, and the current protests over police brutality and Black Lives Matter. It's a long article and worth a read, but the gist of it is that Dr. King embraced tactics that encouraged violence in order to change public perception of the Civil Rights movement.

The article suggests that similar tactics are at play with BLM activism and that the occasional riot or scuffle with the police is following a similar playbook, the author may have the same thoughts regarding the ongoing protests in Charlotte, but the article was written a year ago so I can't definitively say that.

My friends post on Facebook was quickly responded to by idiots who suggested that BLM was in fact "a bunch of thugs looking for an excuse to riot" and that comparing the current movement to Dr. King was offensive, apparently our friend here is unaware of the irony in those two statements.

He made one fair point though, the two tactics are not actually the same and really can't be regarded as such. Dr. King baited violence, he organized protests and marches in such a way as to provoke the oppressors into showing their true colors, perhaps most famously in the Birmingham Children's Crusade, but he did not actively encourage his own people to riot or attack others, the point was to make the world aware of just how much hate was directed at the black community and to help point out that it was the victim, not the perpetrator.

Comparing those tactics to what is basically random mob violence isn't particularly fair, I've said before I find it hard to criticize a community or movement for expressing their outrage and I will continue to avoid that, what I do point out is that organized provocation is not the same thing as a minority of people breaking windows and tipping over cars. I suspect Dr. King would not have approved of the latter particularly not because it wasn't justified, it is, but because it wouldn't help particularly.

But that brings up another point, Martin Luther King Jr. is dead, and he will never be replaced, if BLM is the successor to the Civil Rights Movement and at this point hat is not actually certain, then that movement does not have a true leader, there isn't a lot of real organization happening and the movement does not have a single person that can be thought of as the primary spokesman for the group. There are no tactics at work here beyond that of helping organize the protests and there is no living figurehead to rally behind.

While Dr. King's tactics worked back in the day, I don't know if they will now anyway. I mean, the entire nation, the world, almost daily sees unedited video of black people being murdered in the street and yet it is still seen as controversial for the community to get mad about it. How much more awareness of injustice will make us truly press for change? A massacre? Does the National Guard have to machine gun down protestors before we acknowledge the problem? Would even that matter? I don't know and that is a really uncomfortable feeling, is there a level of oppression that we can inflict on the black community that makes the rest of the country sit up and say "no more" because it seems really easy to just accuse them of being uppity and say we can't help them with their problem until they start working on their own.

And if that feeling makes me uncomfortable, how the shit do you think a black person feels? Knowing that a white cop can literally murder them at any time, for any, or no reason and get away with it without even facing trial, I don't know if I could make myself leave my house if that was the case for me.

Of course, the cops shoot them at home too.