It has been all but impossible to not to notice the Black Lives Matter movement. From coast to coast its members have made their presence known with their unapologetic, in-your-face message and rhetoric. While the organization has been a force for more than a few years, up until recently, mainstream visibility had eluded it. That ended when two of its members disrupted presidential candidate Bernie Sanders as he attempted to deliver a speech in Seattle in early August.
Now, all of a sudden, the media is obsessed with the movement.
Reaction to these protesters was immediate and much of it critical. Many detractors, particularly those on the left, characterized the encounter as an attack on a person who had been an ardent supporter of civil rights, marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and has embraced other progressive measures his entire adult life.
These were the same leftist critics who decried such actions as “disrespectful,” “juvenile” and “misguided.” Some even went as far as threatening to withdraw their support, financial or otherwise from the movement. To be sure, the ire of these protestors was not solely confined to Sanders. Democratic presidential candidate and current frontrunner Hillary Clinton, along with GOP presidential candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, were also confronted by Black Lives Matter activists.
What distinguished this moment of protest from previous acts of civil disobedience was the fact that, in each of these protests, you saw Black activists not merely asking, but rather demanding, results from possible future presidents. Gone was the usual pretense of polite and cordial deference that have often symbolized more recent behavior of Black activism. What we witnessed was an unprecedented level of blunt demands for change not seen in Black movements since the late 1960s when the Black Panthers and other Black activist groups demanded and shouted for revolutionary change. Indeed, in just few months, BLM has been successful in having politicians from both parties address the concerns of Black and brown citizens.
While this attention is notable, there are a number of Black people who are far from content with the movement. Well-known journalist and former civil rights activist Barbara Reynolds penned a recent column expressing her dissatisfaction and dismay with the movement at its current state.
Reynolds makes the case that, while she agrees with the overall message and spirit of Black Lives Matters (BLM) activists, she is put off by what she sees as the lack of discipline and confrontational approach of its members. In a USA TODAY op-ed piece, GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson made the point that, while he agreed with the BLM stance that racism is indeed a factor in American life, the fact is that the movement needs to expand its vision and focus on education, the breakdown of the Black family structure and other factors that he saw as contributing to the disarray plaguing too many lower-income Black communities.
