#BlackLivesMatter to Who?

Black History Matters.
While White America’s public and private sector power brokers and influencers created a caustic and chaotic fear-filled landscape for generations of Black families for more than 100 years, many of those same folks and their families are privileged to fondly remember the era as one to which they seek to return the nation. It would almost be a laughable notion were they not extremely serious about it.
I’d like to ask corporate CEOs and conservative political leaders to consider what evidence is there today that proves Black lives actually do matter in the private sector and legislative bodies, both state and federal? The outcry over the killing of unarmed Black men isn’t new. There’s been a steady chorus of outcries for 150 years!
Moreover, many of the private sector mobs, organized groups and business owners who practiced routine aggression and bias against Black Americans are part of the Baby Boomer generation, born from America’s “Greatest Generation” that also practiced aggression against Black people and routinely dismissed Black voices crying out against violence, institutional bias, social injustice and economic Apartheid leading up to the struggle for Civil Rights in the 50s and 60s. That same dismissive attitude continues today.
Racism Doesn’t Matter … Say Some Whites
If we believe the perspectives of many White Americans, no one is racist or responsible for the plight of Black America other than Black Americans themselves. And if we would just stop the cacophony of racism noise, the problems of the past would become ghosts of the dead and eventually distant memories of a bygone era.
Ironically, that’s an understandable perspective. The nation is still struggling today with the same unbroken string of struggles and aggression perpetrated against Black Americans from Reconstruction. And in the midst of each era of blatant racism and overt hostilities resulting in the deaths of Black people, there were always isolated white people with good hearts who couldn’t imagine the horrors they heard. Obviously, those must’ve been isolated incidents! In the past, no social media existed to deliver a daily diet of very consistent episodes of White power perpetrated upon the powerless. So, it is understandable for those growing up in the Ozzie and Harriett, Leave It To Beaver, Andy Griffith’s Mayberry white Utopia universe that any hint of a nationally sanctioned stranglehold on Black people would sound absurd.
Black lives matter … but not to many during the struggle for Civil Rights.
In 1963, a Gallup Poll revealed 50 percent of White Americans believed President John F. Kennedy was pushing too hard on integrating Blacks. When journalists asked about his views regarding the poll results, JFK continued to assert his support for integration efforts. Two months later he was assassinated. Whether his assassination was racially motivated or not, the fact remains that he disagreed with a widespread sentiment among Whites who devalued Black lives, and in the end his life also didn’t matter to some folk.
In 1965, Malcolm X was a strong influence in helping Black people face fears that had become embedded within Black communities. He was determined to overcome institutionalized second-class U.S. citizenship “by any means necessary.” He was assassinated. His life didn’t matter to some folk.
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In 1965, the now-infamous Moynihan Report (officially titled, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action”) concluded that Black Americans had, indeed, been the target of institutionalized discrimination, social terrorism and economic Apartheid for 100 years following the Civil War. This report was prepared by the Department of Labor and contained commentary from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who concluded this trend of White aggression would continue for generations unless a national crisis effort was established to disrupt the caustic chaos that resulted in deterioration of the Black family core.
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.The government report cited rising rates of out-of-wedlock births, fatherless homes, severe education achievement gaps and crime-ridden communities as a result of the nation’s ongoing aggression against Black people. The response by the White male-dominated public and private sectors was to blame Black people for their own economic distress and point to the data on the deterioration of the Black family core as the cause of the economic distress (rather than a result of it), thus absolving White America of any responsibility and acquitting itself, acting as both jury and judge.
Black lives didn’t matter individually or collectively to the White public and private sectors across the nation in 1965. In the aftermath of the Moynihan Report, no national crisis intervention was enacted. And no state enacted its own institutional public-private partnership effort of economic competitiveness to empower Black Americans. To this day, no region has a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategies (CEDS) plan for empowering Black communities.
In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King was killed, just three years after he voiced his iconic “dream.” Today, many across America pay homage to Dr. King and his extraordinary contribution toward pricking the conscience of White America. But his life obviously didn’t matter to some folk.
Black lives don’t matter … no matter how intelligent, famous and beloved.
In 1976, the then-famous Quayle Poll surveyed White voters, both Republicans and Democrats, in Illinois during the race between Spiro Agnew and Edward Kennedy to determine their views on race. At least 65 percent of all Whites on both sides of the political aisle said the government had “gone far enough” or “gone too far” in helping Blacks. For a large majority of White voters in Illinois, which was echoed across America, Black lives didn’t matter. In their view, the government had already gone too far. And the private sector whistled a tune of absolution for its past, present and ongoing sins against Black America.
Soon thereafter, Ronald Reagan reminded White Americans they were the good guys and America was a great nation, where if you worked hard and kept your nose clean, you could succeed regardless of your circumstances. Reagan was a turning point in America from a nation of White people who struggled with the question of what should be done with Black people (see Moynihan report) to a nation who simply dismissed the question altogether. “Let them fend for themselves” became the prominent protocol.
Suddenly, White America, in particular many public and private sector leaders and influencers, were stricken with amnesia that enabled them to breathe a collective sigh of relief. The majority of America’s White elite were satisfied that they no longer had to grapple with guilt over the never-ending economic distress, social injustices and institutionalized discrimination they had fostered and sustained within Black communities and generations of Black families.
Black lives don’t matter … no matter how young or how old.
The attitudes of blaming Black folk for their own ills resonated with millions of White Americans across the nation. And the private sector, which gleefully boasted responsibility for job growth, wealth creation and America’s global economic competitiveness, ignored any responsibility for its failure to invest in uplifting the economic competitiveness of Black communities at any point in the past 150 years.
Today, America’s Black communities remain uniformly disconnected from their local innovation and economic job-producing ecosystems. Black-owned businesses collectively produce less than 1 percent of GDP and zero percent job growth. And they have no power among themselves to change those circumstances. That power belongs to the private sector. Unfortunately, to the private sector, these communities and businesses didn’t matter then and most don’t matter now. And the people within them didn’t matter. To the private sector, America is a meritocratic democratic nation of economic opportunity for all; her meritocratic environment of opportunity is the reason why our shores are flooded with immigrants seeking to live here.
Black lives don’t matter … even in protest.
To the private sector, the protests, marches, signs and t-shirts remind them of that awful period in America’s history when somebody else was doing unimaginable harm to Black people. No one seems to know who was being aggressive toward Black people. And few believe it was anywhere as bad for Black people as they tend to pronounce.
And in any case, the struggles of that era were all settled after Dr. King’s great speech in 1963 in the minds of many White Americans. And any debt of any kind most assuredly was all settled after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And then there was the 1965 Voting Rights Act. So, what else is left for White people to do for Black people? In the minds of many, those acts had gone far enough or perhaps even too far! Black people should now pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and dive into the rugged individualism of the greatest nation in the world! Right?
Black lives don’t matter … when they clash with institutions of White power.
To many White Americans, Black lives don’t matter. And no amount of signage or slogans on a t-shirt or trending twitter discussion will have any influence or affect such a privileged paradigm. Many of those harboring such dismissive attitudes are those same folks for whom Black lives didn’t matter 50 years ago. Not much has changed.
And a few protests and marches won’t change anything either, especially when they are marred by opportunists to whom private sector protagonists can point and say, “see”? And turn off the television.