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“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” said Martin Luther King in his best-known speech.
The U.S. is sadly moving further away from that ideal, returning to the times when the color of one’s skin determined how a person was treated and, to a large extent, the future that awaited him or her.
The policies being applied to the black community, as well as the imposed narrative that blacks are victims of the system, are plunging black Americans into cycles of poverty and crime. This matters neither to the Democratic leaders who gain power through these initiatives nor to the heads of the “anti-racist” movements who, by paving the way for certain politicians, line their pockets with money.
Parents are always told that children should not be overprotected because they can become useless. If children know they need to make no effort, to study or work, because they will always be able to count on their parents’ money, there is a good chance that they will become too dependent and prefer to have a life without many luxuries, but with plenty of leisure time.
There are perverse incentives that destroy people and terribly modify their behavior. If the state is continuously and increasingly allocating money and public policies in general for a specific community, what happens is that incentives are generated so that these people prefer to earn a subsidy than to make an effort and achieve things on their own.
Unemployment benefits, subsidies for having children, subsidies for being homeless, subsidies simply for being black. The “anti-racists” are treating blacks as if they are disabled and are creating perverse incentives for that community.
They recently celebrated the fact that Biden’s stimulus plan earmarks $5 billion for black American farmers just because they are black. We are moving further and further away from Martin Luther King’s dream.
Just as it is convenient for the heads of these “anti-racist” movements to tell blacks that there is a historical debt and systemic racism for which they should be subsidized, it is also convenient for them to tell blacks that whites are the enemy.
What we have seen in the last year, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, is appalling. It is a frontal and heartbreaking attack on the unity of a country, on decades of progress to eliminate racism.
The George Floyd Case and Black-on-Black Crimes
BLM and its allies have divided the United States into two groups and have used Floyd to push for their agenda. They have told blacks that whites are to blame for their misfortunes while demanding that whites give up their “privilege,” asking whites to feel bad about being born with that skin color.
Just as with the subsidies and perverse incentives that trap black communities in poverty and low educational levels, with the issue of black murder and the so-called racism that is causing whites to kill blacks, the real intent is not to help the black community, but to advance the political agenda.
From 1980 to 2008, in 93% of the cases where the homicide victim was black, so was the murderer. By no measure is it true that “whites are killing blacks.” If the concern is about high black murder rates, the focus should not be primarily on whites, but on blacks themselves.
Are we going to hear this figure at some BLM meeting? Will we see a serious analysis of why black-on-black crime is occurring and how the number can be lowered? The answer is no. They don’t care. They are not going to go out and yell at blacks to stop killing blacks. The reality is that they don’t care about black Americans having better socioeconomic outcomes and they don’t care about the murder numbers going down.
Their objective is to divide the country. To tell blacks that whites are the enemy and thereby gain the support of that community. While making whites feel bad about issues that are not their fault and thereby gaining clueless voters who have good faith and feel indebted for having supposed privileges that harm another race.
That’s why all the activism that has been generated around the George Floyd case is the perfect scene to popularize their white vs. black narrative, and as a plus, they have an excuse to scream “defund the police.”
Why isn’t such passionate activism being used on a day-to-day basis to seek a real solution to the problem of high black homicide rates? All the blacks who die every day at the hands of other blacks don’t matter, only the one who died at the hands of a white guy who also happens to be a cop matter.
Where are the BLM protestors when millions of black babies are aborted? Those black lives don’t matter, do they? Quite the contrary, there are their activists all too ready to seek support from white millionaires who will pay for the murders of black children.
If they move forward with their call to defund the police, what will happen in those neighborhoods where the population is majority black and there are high crime rates? Hasn’t BLM thought of that? If there are no police, who is going to defend blacks who are in a dangerous situation?
If former police officer Derek Chauvin acted badly it wasn’t because he was white or because he was a police officer. Nor is there any way to prove that Chauvin acted that way because Floyd was black. Nothing points to that. The George Floyd case has to do with abuse of authority, not racism. The lawsuit should be about improving processes and preventing cases of police abuse, but BLM’s effort is about dividing a country and winning votes.
BLM and their “anti-racist” friends are just using a dead man to advance their political agenda. They are not interested in data, they are not interested in facts, they are not interested in improving the quality of life for black people.
Vanessa Vallejo. Co-editor-in-chief of El American. Economist. Podcaster. Political and economic analysis of America. Colombian exile in the United States // Vanessa Vallejo. Co-editora en jefe de El American. Economista. Podcaster. Análisis político y económico de América. Colombiana exiliada en EE. UU.