Get the Ricochet app
Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.
The following are questions I believe should be put to anyone who participated in or supported the #BlackLivesMatter movement over the past ten years. I believe these are reasonable questions to be asked of any movement with the stated goal of improving the lives of human beings, but particularly one for which the country has paid a high human and financial price.
QUESTION: Between 2013 and 2025, what concrete, measurable, beneficial improvements in the lives of black Americans can be attributed to the activities of the Black Lives Matter movement?
ANSWER: As far as I can discover, there is no positive change that can be attributed to the #BLM movement. Black Americans are not better off, and more importantly, they don't feel better off than they did before #BLM burned Ferguson back in 2015.
Between 2014 and 2019, black suicide rates increased. By 2023, suicide was the third biggest cause of death among young blacks, surpassing the suicide rate for whites for the first time. This, despite impressive economic gains, including increases in black median income over the same period.
Reports of anti-black racism and hate crimes have increased significantly, surging by 84% between 2014 and 2024. Whether this is the result of changed perceptions among blacks or changed behavior among non-blacks is immaterial: The anti-racist movement resulted in more, not less, racism.
Homicide remains the number one cause of death for black men between the ages of 15 and 35. Though homicide levels in general and among African Americans peaked in the 1990s, and dropped significantly between 1990 and 2012 (African American homicide victims dropped from 39.4 to 19.4 homicides per 100,000 during that time), rates began to climb again in 2012, with a rate of 29.0 homicides per 100,000 in 2022---in other words, over the same period in which #BLM was active.
QUESTION: If, between 2014 and 2024, there were improvements to policing in America, can it be demonstrated that these came about because of #BLM?
ANSWER: Changes to policing can certainly be found, though many can be considered negative, with the obvious example being a dramatic and continuing decline in staffing levels as hiring and retention in a maligned profession became more difficult. The majority of changes generally understood to be improvements were already in process when #BLM began (e.g., the widespread adoption of dash- and body-worn cameras).
QUESTION: #BLM as a movement came into being specifically to address the problem of unarmed black men being killed by the police. Was that problem solved, or significantly ameliorated?
ANSWER: No. The number of unarmed black men killed by the police has increased since #BLM
Discussion (18)
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Good questions and I generally agree with your take on this. Speaking of improvements to policing, it seems to me that it was liberals and the left (not sure about BLM's position on the matter) that were calling for body cams on police 10+ years ago in large part because of these sort of racial incidents involving the police. That has since come to pass and the result has been in those cases alleging racial discrimination or mistreatment of blacks and other minorities by the cops the body cams almost always show the charges of mistreatment based on race to be false.
CHARTER MEMBER
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Don't forget the Ferguson effect
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I didn't want to go into the manifold deleterious effects of #BLM---including increased felonious line of duty deaths after years of very welcome decline.
A longer, later post might have to be about the way #BLM facilitated the corruption of law enforcement, not its reform.
MODERATOR
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Why, GrannyDude, don't you know that asking those questions is an indication of a racist mindset and an act of violence? That it's just your white privilege talking? Shame on you!
CHARTER MEMBER
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Let's say I put together an organization that can extort enormous amounts of money while posing as a charity, and creates destruction and unrest as a side effect.
What would be the best way to market and promote it?
You're seeing five of 18 comments. Sign in, or join for just $5 per month, to read them all and add your own.