This is why Black Lives Don't Matter
Yeah, I thought that title would get your attention. You’ve heard the politicians tell you; “Well, of course, All lives matter”. Yeah, theoretically that might be true. But reality doesn’t seem to correspond to that theory. If it were true, there would never be a reason for a movement called “Black Lives Matter” to exist. It would be a given.
On December 10th of 2014, I published a book titled, “Growing up White in Racist America”.
I wrote this book because I was appalled by what I was seeing taking place in this country. Racism has always been with us. Slavery was our original sin, and the racism that came along with it for the ride has poisoned this country ever since. But it had seemed to be marginalized for the most part. Nobody spoke outwardly in openly racist terms. That is, until we elected the first African American President. That was too much for a lot of people. And those people are Conservatives.
Situationally, conservatism is defined as the ideology arising out of a distinct but recurring type of historical situation in which a fundamental challenge is directed at established institutions and in which the supporters of those institutions employ the conservative ideology in their defense.
Thus, conservatism is that system of ideas employed to justify any established social order, no matter where or when it exists, against any fundamental challenge to its nature or being, no matter from what quarter. Conservatism in this sense is possible in the United States today only if there is a basic challenge to existing American institutions which impels their defenders to articulate conservative values.
The Civil Rights movement was a direct challenge to the existing institutions of the time, and conservatism as an ideology is thus a reaction to a system under challenge, a defense of the status – quo in a period of intense ideological and social conflict. The very notion of a race of people that was; at our beginnings as a country, only considered to be 3/ 5’ s of a human being, now having equal footing with those that actually believed in this idea, is a direct challenge to a long held social concept . It denied the idea of white supremacy as legitimate. It’s surprising how many people still cling to this idea, and will go to extreme lengths to perpetuate it. The idea that a person that could have been your slave at one time, could today be your boss, or even President of the United States, is more than some people can deal with on an emotional level. White supremacy as an institution is renounced, discredited, and dismantled, and that is a major blow to an existing order, and conservatism is always a reaction to a challenge to an existing order. These are people that desperately need somebody to look down to in order to validate their own self-worth. “Sure, life is tough. But at least I’m White.” They can no longer rely on a policy that used to be institutionally enforceable. When that is removed by law, hostility is the result; hostility for those that have been emancipated by law and elevated to equal status, and hostility for the law itself including those that proposed it and passed it.
Thus, hatred for African-Americans and for the Liberal’s and liberal policies that endorse their equal status is fully embraced by the conservative. Letting go of the past is difficult to do. An entire race of people becomes an easy scapegoat for one’s own failures. Hate is passed on from one generation to the next. Parents teach their children to hate. The cure for hate is education, so every attempt to keep schools segregated was an important factor. Every attempt to de-segregate schools was blocked.
Integrated schools are a way of leveling the playing field and a sign of equality and equality is a challenge to the social fabric. The more narrow the view point, the more ignorant the person becomes and the easier it is to promote fear and fear promotes hate. Fear always promotes hate. The conservative mind embraces a narrow point of view. It doesn’t like being challenged. It resists new information. A liberal mind by definition is open to change, but change always threatens the existing order, so the liberal is not to be trusted. He is feared, and hated because he challenges the existing order. Another glaring problem is that the conservative knows there is no rational justification for his racism. He knows that it’s wrong, intellectually, but he’s imprisoned by an ideology without a basis, and this ideology appeals to his “Gut” and not his brain. As Charles Pierce wrote, “The Gut is the roiling repository of dark and ancient fears. It knows what it knows because it knows how it feels”. Richard Hofstadter points to this when he says, “Intellect is pitted against feeling”, he writes, “on the ground that it is somehow inconsistent with warm emotion. It is pitted against character, because it is widely believed that intellect stands for cleverness, which transmutes easily into the sly or the diabolical”.
The Conservatives entire set of values is wrapped in a theory of rationality that was handed to him by somebody else with a nice big bow. His way of life is now threatened by a truth that contradicts his beliefs. To admit that it was flawed and without any basis, is to admit that, foundationally, everything he believed in is flawed and that means that he could be wrong about something. And that also means that there is no justification for the pain and suffering that his ideology has inflicted on others. An entire Civil War was fought and over 600,000 lives were lost in order to continue a way of life that was baseless. Rather than admit that his beliefs were in error, he clings to the ideology of hate and directs that hate toward the object that is the very cause of the hate: The Black Man. The Black Man is a constant reminder that his ideology is flawed, a reminder that his hatred is baseless. Holding on to an ideology with no basis is irrational. Rather than dump this irrational way of thinking, he embraces irrationality as a way of life. He becomes a justificationist, and looks for anything that will justify his flawed ideology. He looks for passages in the Bible as a justification for slavery and therefore a justification for his beliefs. He finds a refuge in the Bible and religion, (conservatives a very religious bunch) and this becomes the foundation that he “feels” he can stand on. But he fails to recognize that the Bible cannot be its own basis. That’s circular reasoning. A Criteria cannot be its own criteria. If we claim a basis gives us truth, we then are making the implicit claim that truth requires bases. But then it is plainly obvious our own basis lacks a basis, as it cannot be its own basis. The Bible might justify slavery, but what justifies the Bible? Well… it’s the inspired word of God. According to whom? According to the Bible. That’s circular reasoning. That’s a logical fallacy.
Clinging to a logical fallacy , when you know it’s a logical fallacy is irrational. Conservatives insist on a foundationalist way of thinking, and the basis, the foundation of this idea all rests on something claiming itself as its own foundation. So… what is the foundation for the foundation, or the basis for the basis? They don’t like being pressed on this because that requires defending a stated position based on something, and that leads to an infinite regress vs. their dogma. Trying to justify a basis leads to more justification for yet another basis and that leads into a black hole of one justification after another. There is no exit.
Conservatives oppose the “liberal agenda”. But what is that “agenda”? Liberalism challenges the status-quo. Conservatism opposes any challenge to the status-quo. And there you have it. But what is the justification for the status-quo, especially one that keeps an entire race of people suppressed because of an ideology without a basis? African-Americans are fully aware of this attitude coming from conservatives, which is why so few align themselves to this ideology.
And it’s why a movement called Black Lives Matter was inevitable. It’s precisely because they know that Black Lives don’t really matter in America. If they did, we wouldn’t see Flint Michigan still waiting for safe water to drink. And that MUST change.
Conservatives talk about trying to reach out to the African-American community, but fail to understand that nobody wants to hang with people that hate you. Blacks understand the source of this hatred, and are not likely to embrace it. Until conservatism renounces racism and purges racists from the Republican Party, they’ll never reach the African-American in any significant numbers. As pointed out by Professor Robert C. Smith, “African American thought has always been mainly a system-challenging, dissident thought. However, until the 1950s and 1960s this thought had not been linked to a powerful mass movement. And the mere articulation of a dissident ideology does not produce conservatism until the ideology is embraced by significant social groups. Once it appeared that the black movement presented “a clear and present danger” to the existing order, a self-conscious conservative movement would necessarily emerge, and it would also necessarily be for the most part a racist movement”.
Frankly, I’m surprised that more African/Americans haven’t taken to Bernie Sanders. I think they see an old white guy from one of the whitest states in the country, and don’t see any connection. But the photo at the top of this essay, would never appear in the state of Vermont. It’s the most liberal state in the country.
Bernie Sanders is a champion for social justice. And Social Justice is universal. A movement called Black Lives Matters exists because people can see that social justice in America is not universal, and that Black Lives dont’ matter in this country. Not when Eric Garner is choked to death by the police on camera for the entire country to witness, and nobody is indicted for murdering that man. And of course that’s only one example.
Sanders knows this as well. His entire message is about social justice, and that includes economic justice, as well as racial justice. In fact, you can’t have one without the other. Martin Luther King knew this. King not only stood up against racial discrimination but stood up against poverty as well. Those that think that Sanders doesn’t talk about racial justice “enough”, ignore his history of civil rights activism in the 60’s. They seem to think that he’s just entered the fray in the last 40 days, rather than the last 40 years.
There is not one thing that Sanders addresses that has a negative impact on the African/American community. Universal health care. Tuition free education through college. Raising the minimum wage to $15/hr. A massive infrastructure project that will employ millions of people of all races, and raise their living standards
Does any of this specifically target the black community? No. Not directly. But it doesn’t exclude anybody either. It’s universal. And that makes it consistent with the Catagorical Moral Imperative that Kant spoke of, and it seems that Sanders is a Kantian thinker. What is a catagorical imperative? A catagorical imperative commands without reference to or dependence on any further purpose. The actions are done for their own sake. Not for what they will get you.
“Act only on that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”.
“We can’t base the Catagorical Imperative on any particular interests purposes or ends. Because then it would be only relative to the person who’s ends they were. (There is no moral worth to an action rooted in self-interest.)
But suppose there were something who’s existence has in itself an absolute value…an end in itself…then in it and in it alone there would be the ground of a possible categorical imperative”
What is there that we can think of that has an end in itself? Kant’s answer is this:
“I say that man and in general every rational being, exists as an end in himself not merely as a means for arbitrary use by this or that will.”
Kant makes no racial distinction’s here. It’s a universal statement. He’s speaking of every rational being. Kant distinguishes persons on the one hand, and things on the other. Rational beings are persons. They don’t just have a relative value for us, if anything they have an absolute value, and intrinsic value. Rational beings have dignity. They’re worthy of respect.
This line of reasoning leads Kant to the second formulation of the categorical imperative which is this: ‘
“Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end.”
It’s the idea that human beings as rational beings are ends in themselves not open to use merely as a means to some other end.
This kind of thinking allows no place for racism. It doesn’t single out any particular race or ethnicity. To do so would be racist.
We do the right thing for the right reason. Not for what it might get us. The motive is wrong. There is no moral worth in doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. You don’t pander to certain people to get their vote. Your motive is wrong. You do the right thing regardless of what it does for you in the end.
I think that Sanders gets it. I think he does subscribe to the catagorical imperative. I think it’s quite different from the consequentialist moral reasoning seen in conservative thinking. It’s that kind of thinking that feeds the notion of states rights.
When somebody tells you that “All lives Matter” as some snappy rejoinder that’s supposed to undercut the Black lives matter movement, simply tell them; No they don’t. If Black Lives don’t matter, then no lives matter at all. Unless “All Lives Matter” is universal, then it’s just patronizing bullshit.
