It wasn't.
Police officers are looking over their shoulders as several cops have been targeted and gunned down. The week before classes started, seven officers were killed in the line of duty; a few were execution-style targeted killings.Guess what the response was.
An officer I talked to put it succinctly: “If they want to come after me, fine. Just come at me head on. Don’t shoot me in the back of my head. I’d rather go down with a fighting chance.”
Is this an atmosphere created by the police officers and racist elements in society itself? Many, including individuals in the Black Lives Matter movement, believe so.
Or is it because of Black Lives Matter? Many believe that as well, including a police chief who made his remarks after one of his officers was shot and killed—he claimed that Black Lives Matter was responsible for the officer’s death. Some want Black Lives Matter labeled as a hate group.
I talked to a Black Lives Matter supporter, Michael Smith ’18, who recoiled when I told him I was wondering if the movement was legitimate. This is not questioning their claims of racism among the police, or in society itself. Rather, is the movement itself actually achieving anything positive? Does it have the potential for positive change?...
[F]ollowing the Baltimore riots, the city saw a big spike in murders. Good officers, like the one I talked to, go to work every day even more worried that they won’t come home. The officer’s comments reminded me of what soldiers used to say after being hit with IEDs in Iraq. Police forces with a wartime-like mentality are never a good thing....
It boils down to this for me: If vilification and denigration of the police force continues to be a significant portion of Black Lives Matter’s message, then I will not support the movement, I cannot support the movement. And many Americans feel the same. I should repeat, I do support many of the efforts by the more moderate activists....
At some point Black Lives Matter is going to be confronted with an uncomfortable question, if they haven’t already begun asking it: Is this all worth it? Is it worth another riot that destroys a downtown district? Another death, another massacre? At what point will Black Lives Matter go back to the drawing table and rethink how they are approaching the problem?
Fortunately, so far, the President of Wesleyan is holding the line. Good for him.
3 comments:
BLM-Nation of Islam-Assassination of Malcom X.
Unlike what the SPLC says, terrorist groups aren't composed of 95% right wing militias and 5% jihadists. There's something else going on there.
Money quote from the Reason article:
The students (and faculty! staff*) who circulated the petition have no interest in enlivening the debate, unfortunately; they wish only to control it. But they are insincere peddlers of diversity and false advocates of marginalized voices—after all, who is more “marginalized” at a private liberal arts college in Connecticut: the left-leaning activists running the student government or the lone newspaper conservative?
It is also ironic for students at an elite liberal arts college to talk about the "marginalized." The marginalized don't got to Wesleyan, but to Podunk Community College or don't go to college at all. The bleating about "marginalized" is to show that not only are they intellectually superior by virtue of having been admitted to Wesleyan but by virtue of being concerned about the "marginalized" they are also morally superior to those schlubs who can't get into Wesleyan. In every way, they are among the elect.
Perhaps they should ask some black people at random in Middletown, or Connecticut as a whole, what they think of BLM.
Groups that claim to be representing The People are almost always about 15% of the Actual People.
Post a Comment