The Black Lives Matter Effect

The Black Lives Matters Effect, Part 2: Purdue’s Free Speech Chill

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Perdue letter

 

So powerful is the desire to be seen as on the “right” side  in an era where race trumps everything that a major university is harassing a student because he dared to be critical of Black Lives Matter. This is another, more sinister aspect of the Black Lives Matter Effect. A racist hate group that claims to promote virtuous objectives as cover, Black Lives Matter causes well-intentioned progressives-in-denial to equate well-earned attacks on the group to rejection of racial justice.

This episode is especially troubling. Purdue University Northwest student Joshua Nash received an ominous letter summoning him to a “required Administrative Meeting” scheduled by a campus administrator to discuss Nash’s personal Facebook comments. This is as appropriate as a letter demanding a student’s appearance before authorities because there was a complaint about his off-color toast at a wedding reception.

Nash says he isn’t certain which Facebook post was deemed worthy of threatened discipline, but it was probably the one where he states “Black Lives Matter is trash because they do not really care about black lives. They simply care about making money and disrupting events for dead people.” According to Nash, that comment was reported to Facebook, with removed it and suspended his account for 30 days. Nash also claims that a campus official said his social media comments could result in his expulsion.

I assume that FIRE will soon be in Nash’s corner, and maybe, just maybe, the ACLU, depending on what its integrity level is these days. This is campus suppression of free speech. I think the threat of expulsion–for a Facebook post?—is too ridiculous to be taken seriously, but the letter is bad enough. All students need to know is that a politically incorrect Facebook post will get them hauled into a “meeting,” a.k.a. inquisition, and their speech, with the exceptions of a few wilful martyrs, civil libertarians, and rebels, will be effectively muzzled. Continue reading →

The Black Lives Matters Effect, Part I: The Tenor And The Blogger

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
Singing the right lyrics also matters, you boob...

Singing the right lyrics also matters, you boob…

One thing you have to say for Black Lives Matters: it is good at making people make asses of themselves. “Late Night” host Seth Myers was yesterday’s example, but there are oh-so-many-more, and much worse.

For example, in the pre-game ceremonies of the Major League Baseball 2016 All-Star Game in San Diego, a Canadian tenor, apparently driven to distraction by the reverential treatment given to a group that promotes race hatred and a color-based standard for law-enforcement, snapped while performing the Canadian national anthem. Remigio Pereira, a member of  the vocal group The Tenors tapped to sing the anthem, held up a handwritten sign that read “All Lives Matter” altered the lyrics in the line “With glowing hearts we see thee rise. The True North strong and free” to “We’re all brothers and sisters, all lives matter to the great.”

This doesn’t fit the music, and is even worse than the real lyrics, which is quite a feat. Of course, Remigio was unethical to do this, expropriating an event that had nothing to do with Black Lives Matter, nor race, nor politics to make his own grandstanding statement (come to think of it, baseball does have something to do with grandstands. The stunt was disrespectful of everyone—his hosts, Major League Baseball; San Diego; the captive audience in the stadium, the TV audience, Canada. It was also a breach of trust that directly and perhaps fatally wounded his group, which immediately suspended him (Can we say F-I-R-E-D, Tenors? Sure we can) and issued an abject apology.

The statement was not unduly disrespectful to Black Lives Matter, however, which has shown itself to be unworthy of respect, as all divisive hate groups are.

The Black Lives Matters effect is wide-ranging, however, as this episode shows. It not only makes Canadian tenors irresponsible, but sportswriters too. Over at NBC Sports online, baseball blogger Craig Calcaterra couldn’t perceive the unethical nature of a performer hijacking a paid gig for his own purposes, but lectured his readers on the sin of using the term “All Lives Matter,” writing,

This may not seem terribly controversial to some, but in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement that has risen over the past few years, “All Lives Matter” has come to be seen as a reactionary response which fundamentally misunderstands — often intentionally — the purpose of the Black Lives Matter movement. And is used to belittle and marginalize the Black Lives Matter Movement. The phrase “black lives matter” does not mean that “black lives matter more than any other lives.” If it did, sure, maybe “All Lives Matter” would be a reasonable response. But “Black Lives Matter” is a response to a society and, particularly, police, which treat blacks as lesser persons and who do not face repercussions for harming and in some cases killing black people through excessive force. It’s “black lives matter too” — a necessary statement, sadly — not “black lives matter more.”

Sigh. Continue reading →