Why I Cannot Support Black Lives Matter

This title may be a bit deceiving, but I didn't know how else to write it. I want to make a clear distinction between Black Lives Matter, the organization, and the statement or idea that black lives matter. Black lives MUST matter. Black lives should absolutely matter. No person should face discrimination or hate because they are black. If there are indeed problems with law enforcement unfairly targeting black people, especially black men, then that needs to be dealt with. This I fully, 100 percent support.

What I absolutely cannot support is the Black Lives Matter organization itself. To me, when I look at their website and articles about them, what I see are absolutely radical ideas that I can't really get behind. And, on December 7th, they posted a statement regarding the Jussie Smollett trial that just rubs me the absolute wrong way and further solidifies my disagreement with BLM.

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Now, I really don't care about the Jussie Smollett trial too much. To be honest, I thought the whole faking of a hate crime was pretty hilarious, although I can understand why some don't agree. The whole thing was absurd, and laughable. I mean, for an actor, he did a pretty bad job of acting. No one is really sure why he did this. It's perplexing, and the fact that he has been lying about it right to the bitter end, and still won't stop, is just ridiculous. It was pretty clear that it was a hoax to many people. As much as anything, as a result, the guy has become the brunt of many jokes. Was that his goal?? Whatever he was hoping to achieve, the courts confirmed that he was, indeed, lying about the hate crime attack he claims he suffered.

So, what does the Black Lives Matter organization say? Well, they say that they absolutely do not believe the cops, that this shouldn't have gone to trial, and that they 100 percent believe Jussie Smollett. The police in Chicago are irredeemably corrupt and cannot be believed. They want the abolition of that police department and the entire system that would dare put a person like Jussie Smollett on trial to begin with. You can read the full statement from Black Lives Matter at the link below. Note that the trial is now over and he has been found guilty of lying about a hate crime.

Statement Regarding the Ongoing Trial of Jussie Smollett

What angers me here is that the Chicago Police Department worked hard to find out who did the hate crime that Smollett insists happened. The reason the whole thing has gone to trial is because so many resources, time, money and effort went into trying to solve the case of who attacked him. In the end, the evidence was NOT on the side of Jussie Smollett and he has been found guilty of the hoax.

So, why is Black Lives Matter supporting him? Simple. He's black. And, because he is black, the system is against him and the cops are against him so there is no way that he is getting a fair trial and no way that he is lying. That is their claim.

"In our commitment to abolition, we can never believe police, especially the Chicago Police Department (CPD) over Jussie Smollett, a Black man who has been courageously present, visible, and vocal in the struggle for Black freedom."

Well, what can I say? No matter what the result was going to be, BLM had spoken. He is not guilty. He told the truth. The system is broken. The authorities are the liars. There is no way BLM will accept that Jussie Smollett perpetuated a hoax.

This sounds an awful lot like Donald Trump to me, calling all news that wasn't good for him "Fake News", undermining news organizations and information, basically blaming them for everything that will go wrong for him in the future. Everyone else was lying and couldn't be trusted. He was the good guy, and the system was against him.

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BLM, the organization, has said a few weird things that just don't add up for me. For example, when they came out in support of the Cuban Communist regime at a time when the Cuban police were out busting heads of protesters in the streets demanding freedom. Instead of speaking out in favor of those who wanted freedom, they blasted the US for the embargo it has placed on the country. You can read their statement here on their Instagram page.

Now, I won't say that the embargo has been fair to the average Cuban. But, with or without an embargo, the Cuban Communist regime is still oppressive and rights and freedoms or severely curtailed. But, somehow, the regime is the good guy and the US is the bad guy. And history professor Jorge Felipe-Gonzalez took aim at BLM over their bizarre support of the Cuban regime in an opinion piece in The Atlantic.

Cubans—and particularly Black Cubans—are suffering. The Cuban judicial system is prosecuting the protesters with sentences of up to 20 years. BLM, of all organizations, should be aware that Cubans can’t breathe either. Black Cuban lives also matter; the freedom of all Cubans should matter. To echo the organization’s stated reason for existing, no one is free until we are all free.

A lot of BLM's idea are, to me, way too radical. I just can't support this organization. These are just two of the examples that leave me shaking my head. Again, I absolutely support the idea that black lives matter. They do. They have to. But I just can't support the organization that has grown out of this movement.