Subsequent to her viral rant-video (see below), Nestride Yumga has landed this op-ed in the WSJ in which she distills the essence of her criticism against Black Lives Matter and similar movements and approaches. It resonates with my own deep feelings on the matter.
Following the death of George Floyd, the protests and the riots, a deep emotional chasm has opened up over this issue - hard to characterize exactly what the issue is because the terms are fuzzy, but basically the issue of the existence and nature of what is often called "systemic racism" or equivalently "institutional racism" - dragging along with it the co-pathologies of "white privilege," "inherent bias," "intersectionality," "racial justice" and more.
Perhaps a really encouraging aspect of this divide is that it does not seem to cut simply across racial lines - many of the most passionate critics of the "racial justice" approach are black. And many (most?) of its most passionate proponents are white. And the divide seems even to span political and ideological categories – many of my classical liberal (libertarian friends) apparently disagree with or are disturbed by my approach, and a few conservatives seem likewise unpredictably aligned. I think much has to do with loaded semantics and vagueness of terms.
The sentence I find most compelling is this one: "African-Americans need real policy reforms, not racial antagonism."
If we can agree on that maybe we can have a proper conversation.
