Black Appraisals of Black Lives Matter: Part III
Black Perspectives on Black Lives Matter: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Robert L. Woodson, Niger Innis, Burgess Owens, Horace Cooper, Candace Owens, Chloé Valdary, Richard Sherman, Denzel Washington, Barbara Ann Reynolds, Marcellus Wiley, Jason Whitlock and Muhammad Ali Jr.
Black Appraisals of Black Lives Matter: Part III
Soeren Kern | Gatestone Institute | October 7, 2020
This multi-part series (Part I here, Part II here , Part III here, Part IV here) focuses on the perspectives of blacks — conservative, liberal or libertarian — who appraise BLM and its agenda. The following selection of commentary by blacks from all walks of life — actors, athletes, business people, civil rights activists, clergy, commentators, physicians and politicians — demonstrates that black public opinion is not monolithic and that BLM does not speak for all African Americans.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author and research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, wrote:
“Outrage is the natural response to the brutal killing of George Floyd. Yet outrage and clear, critical thinking seldom go hand in hand. An act of police brutality became the catalyst for a revolutionary mood. Protests spilled over into violence and looting. Stores were destroyed; policemen and civilians injured and killed. The truism ‘black lives matter’ was joined by a senseless slogan: ‘Defund the police.’ ….
“I have no objection to the statement ‘black lives matter.’ But the movement that uses that name has a sinister hostility to serious, fact-driven discussion of the problem it purports to care about. Even more sinister is the haste with which academic, media and business leaders abase themselves before it. There will be no resolution of America’s many social problems if free thought and free speech are no longer upheld in our public sphere. Without them, honest deliberation, mutual learning and the American problem-solving ethic are dead.”
