Black Lives Don’t Matter to Black Lives Matter

The Black Lives Matter movement is now on the record demanding an expansion of the same sort of big government approach to combating poverty that has held too many African-Americans locked into cycles of inner-city poverty for generations.

When members of the Black Lives Matter movement released their first official policy platform on Aug. 1, they issued a series of six major demands designed to “articulate and support the ambitions and work of Black people,” according to its platform.

“If you will only untie his hands, and give him a chance, I think he will live. He will work as readily for himself as the white man.”

But the first economic reform demanded by the group flatly contradicts the goal of supporting “the ambitions and work of Black people.” Why is that? Because it advocates for black Americans to remain on a welfare-like system.

Under the category of “Reparations,” the platform issued from the Movement for Black Lives demands “reparations for past and continuing harms” because of the residual effects of “colonialism” and “slavery.” Stating that the United States must make amends now for its discrimination and crimes committed against black Americans throughout the centuries, the platform calls for an interesting reparation: “a guaranteed minimum livable income for all Black people.”

“No other social or economic policy solution today would be of sufficient scale to eradicate the profound and systemic economic inequities afflicting Black communities,” the platform reads. “UBI [Universal Basic Income] would eliminate absolute poverty, ensuring economic security for all by mandating an income floor covering basic needs.”

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And on top of all that, the platform champions its “grand bargain with white America” with this generous promise: “All would benefit, but those who suffered through slavery and continuing racism would benefit slightly more.”

But as the demand states, unlike most other social welfare and insurance programs, this UBI plan would not require adults to work or do anything to create jobs for inner-city Americans; it simply says that “all individual adults” would be eligible. So how is this supposed to support “the ambitions and work of Black people” – unless those ambitions constitute remaining on welfare and staying fully dependent on government?

The American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s has come a long way, but the demands have morphed and the rhetoric has become more divisive. The BLM movement of today has also strayed far from the beliefs and actions of civil rights advocates of earlier times — who advocated for opportunity for their communities, rather than handouts.

Frederick Douglass, one of the 19th century’s most prominent black abolitionists and social reformers, predicted the dangers that black Americans would suffer if they allowed themselves to depend upon the handouts of others — whether they were well-meaning or not.

“Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, ‘What shall we do with the negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us,” Douglass said in an 1865 speech called “What the Black Man Wants.”

“And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!” Douglass said. “Let him live or die by that. If you will only untie his hands, and give him a chance, I think he will live. He will work as readily for himself as the white man.”

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President Lyndon Johnson introduced the “Great Society” reforms in 1964 and 1965, which dramatically expanded welfare and social safety net programs in inner cities. Since that time, government dependency has driven America’s inner cities into increasingly hopelessness, so riven by crime and drug use that their inhabitants are extremely unlikely to escape the poverty they were born into.

In a system where opportunity is replaced by a handout, there is none of the pride and fulfillment found in hard work. But that destructive fact does not seem to concern the leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The BLM platform notes issues facing black Americans created by liberal welfare prescriptions and suggests correcting them with even greater doses of government dependency. The median African-American household had just $7,113 in wealth in 2011, which amounted to more than 15 times less than the $111,146 in wealth the median white household enjoyed. In 2015, the general employment rate was near 5 percent, although black workers faced a 9.2 percent unemployment rate in comparison with white workers’ 4.4 percent unemployment rate.

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The black family structure has also continued to decline. As a 2012 report from the U.S. Census Bureau noted, 57.6 percent of black children in the U.S. live without their biological father, compared with 31.2 percent of Hispanic children and 20.7 percent of white children.

Although these statistics involve complex and multifaceted issues, the platform fails to address in its “Reparations” section or in any others how issues composed of mixtures of internal and external problems will be neatly fixed by mere external intervention.

“Turning back to the ‘legacy of slavery’ as an explanation of social problems in black American communities today, anyone who was serious about the truth — as distinguished from talking points — would want to check out the facts,” Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution — who is himself black — recently wrote in an article for National Review. “It might never occur to many [on the Left] to check their beliefs against some hard facts about what actually happened after their ideas and policies were put into effect.”