Flint Township View

Letter against BLM protest was wrong


David Rowe’s letter criticizing the Grand Blanc Community Schools and Grand Blanc Police Department for supporting the GBHS students’ Black Lives Matter protest contained errors of fact and logic that require correction.

There is no evidence – none whatsoever – that Black Lives Matter groups have ever incited riots or forcibly taken over cities. Official BLM publications and websites contain neither incitement nor approval of violence. Violence and property destruction occur for many reasons, but not by the intentional actions of Black Lives Matter groups.

Mr. Rowe seems to suggest that the clear link between the Black Lives Matter movement and Critical Race Theory is problematic, without providing any argument or supporting data. For more insight into this link, I suggest reading The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander. This book was published in 2010. Or just read the Wikipedia article about Critical Race Theory.

Mr. Rowe’s most grievous error is the assertion of false equivalency between Black Lives Matter groups and the Proud Boys, that he wrapped in a series of rhetorical questions about how officials would treat such a right-wing group. The Justice Department has repeatedly stated that groups like the Proud Boys represent a serious threat to the nation. No thinking school or law enforcement official would stand in support of such a group, notwithstanding the duty of the police to protect the group’s right to free expression enshrined in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

In my lifetime, I have witnessed the United States Justice Department assert that people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Malcom X, Fred Hampton, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and many others constituted a clear and present danger to the nation. The Justice Department was wrong then. I know that because I read what they stood for, and they were on the right side of the moral arc of history. Perhaps in 60 more years the current warnings about right-wingers will also have been proven wrong. But I doubt it, because I’ve read what groups like the Proud Boys stand for, and I do not believe they are on the right side of the moral arc of history. — L. F. Standridge II, Davison