I oppose BLM for separate reasons

I first would like to make clear that I don’t disapprove of the movement against police brutality. What I am against is the organizational and uniform message that frames police brutality as an issue of systemic racism when it really isn’t. If you look deep into all the separate incidents concerning police brutality, you will notice that they were not incidents resulting from some underlying racial bias of an offending officer, but resulted from either a flaw in procedure or a relatively justifiable instance of self-defense.

Michael Brown by far is the most disingenuous example of systemic racism, since the Obama Department of Justice ruled his death as an act of justified self- defense. Treyvon Martin, being the most cutting, can similarly be ruled out, since the scars on the back of George Zimmerman’s head showed self-defense. In addition, past robberies in his neighborhood served as ample evidence for a general misunderstanding. The recently publicized incidents that have occurred this year only prove my case against the systemic racism supposedly found in fatal police encounters.

Ahmaud Arbery’s death dealt more with an issue of vigilantism and he would not have died had the confrontation over the shotgun not ensued. Breonna Taylor died as the result of a botched raid caused in part by no-knock warrants. These are contrasted by the more justified incidents since Rayshard Brooks had beat off two cops and was shot after aiming a taser. Jacob Blake, in stark contrast, had a warrant out for his arrest and had a knife that was found on the floor of his car seat. George Floyd is one case you would expect to be the only instance of an unjustifiable homicide, but many people are not aware of the body cam footage.

He was only subjected to neck restraint due to the Minneapolis Police Department’s authorization of the tactic to be used while resisting suspects. That, in combination with the fatal level of fentanyl, statements that he
could not breathe well before being positioned on the ground along with other aspects demonstrate a false reality framed by Black Lives Matter activists. Floyd’s situation could have been handled better but his death, along with the others, was not the result of racial animosity but instead of a grim procedural miscalculation.

This ties back to Black Lives Matter because for so long they have done a disservice to the Black community and American society by perpetuating the myth that the nation’s vast and disparate law enforcement posed an existential threat to Black Americans and by distorting the reality of criminal justice reform. The flaws with Black Lives Matter don’t end there.

The organization’s own agenda falls well outside of the dimensions encapsulating police brutality. Aside from goals of defunding the police, it has voiced opposition against cisgender privilege, the supposed patriarchal practice regarding women working double shifts, the Western prescribed nuclear family and freedom from heteronormative thinking as well as ageism (beliefs, with the exception of defunding police, that can no longer be found on their website). If there is any doubt about BLM’s waywardness, then its co-founder’s description of themselves as trained Marxists as featured in an excellent b-roll by PragerU titled, “BLM leaders in their own words,” should dispel it.