At New Hope Christian College in Eugene, Oregon, more than 100 people gathered
to protect a cross that had stood on the
campus as a war memorial for more than 20 years. They were alerted that
protesters, who declared it was a “racist symbol,” planned a rally to tear it
down. The attack was thwarted, and two busloads of demonstrators from Portland,
Oregon, were turned away by the police.
The following day, in Portland, a
demonstration escalated into violence that culminated in
the burning of the American flag, and rioters carrying “Black Lives Matter”
signs threw bibles into the flames. The fire was finally extinguished by
members of Moms United for Black Lives Matter, who doused the flames with
bottles of water and stomped on the embers.
These examples of rampant violence
and the desecration of symbols that people in the United States, black and white,
have revealed the true intentions of racial grievance warriors such as those in
Black Lives Matter. They purport to seek racial justice, but in fact, they
have appropriated the moral authority of the civil rights movement to become
the face of the Democratic Party, which has doled out that legacy to a spectrum
of grievance groups. In the words of Georgetown University professor Joshua Mitchell: “Black
America, the secret soul of our country, has seen one group after another
appropriate its moral authority to become new Democratic party vanguards: first
women, then gays and lesbians, and now the transgendered. … None of these
claimants wears the crown of thorns as black Americans have.”
While Black Lives Matter’s strategy
is to posture their protests under the banner of assisting black people in
confronting inequality, its ultimate goal is to bring down this nation,
starting with its founding principles and values, and it relies on fanning the
flames of grievance to fuel its agenda. The strategy is to keep black people in
a state of anger, resentment, and upheaval by associating any and all
disparity, from the impact of the coronavirus to horrifying tolls taken by
street violence, as being caused by the invisible hand of an omnipresent,
institutional racism.
Though black elected officials have been responsible
for the administration of the cities and towns where inequality has been
festering and crises have been rising throughout the decades of their tenure,
this fact does not enter into the discussions of conditions in our inner
cities.
When pressed to answer what should
be done to address the villain of systemic inequality, the racial-grievance
vigilantes present a “Gordian knot” of conflicting solutions.
On the one hand, their quick answer
is to demand for more government aid in the form of “reparations.” Not only
does this ignore the fact that the government dole played a major role in
unraveling the fabric of the black community (which remained strong even in
eras of the greatest discrimination), but it also stands in stark contrast to
the race-grievance demand to defund and ultimately do away with law
enforcement.
The one function that government is
established to do and mandated to do is to protect its citizens. The police are
vilified by the Left, who decry them and demonize them as extensions of white
supremacy. Yet, as we have witnessed throughout the country, the more the
police withdraw, the more black homicides soar — a situation that racial
justice opportunists are quick to capitalize on. They blame the tragic
skyrocketing loss of life to black-on-black crime on systemic racism. As a
result, more dollars are poured into the coffers of Black Lives Matter to
pursue its ultimate agenda, which is symbolized by their cross and flag
burnings and even the destruction of the statue of Frederick Douglass in
Rochester, New York. As long as Black Lives Matter wears the mantle of the
civil rights movement and its moral authority, they are empowered to desecrate
the very symbols, virtues, principles of faith, and nuclear family that brought
black America through slavery, Jim Crow, and even the Depression and wars.
Today, the challenges facing black
America are worse than the conditions of slavery. Slavery imposed an external
boundary.
Today, blacks are being held back by the internal bondage of the
belief that their destiny lies outside of their control and that, until and unless
white America grants what is demanded, life will never improve.
The key from these shackles lies in
the hands of black people. Like the mothers who extinguished the bible-burning
fire in Portland, they alone have the moral authority to reestablish the
foundation of family, faith, and freedom that once empowered the black
community to survive and thrive. As their voice is heard, the feigned moral
authority of those who use their conditions to pursue their dangerous and
devastating agenda will disappear.
Robert L. Woodson Sr. is the founder
and president of the Woodson Center.
