How Black Lives Matter-Style Activism Is Ruining America
by Rachel Lu, The Federalist:
High-minded but ineffective solutions can often be worse than useless insofar as they deter people from focusing on what really needs to be done.
When the Ferguson riots broke out in 2014, the nation was shocked and alarmed. The press gave the event wall-to-wall coverage for a week. For young people this was fairly new territory, while older people had flashbacks to the Los Angeles riots of 1992, or even (if they were old enough) the Watts riots of 1965. These were alarming connections. Weren’t we past all this stuff?
The Baltimore riots in 2015 were a bit less shocking. This was a movie we’d all just seen. By the time we got to Charlotte, the element of surprise had been completely lost. Deadly race riots are starting to take on the banality of “same old, same old.” I’ve actually started looking forward to winter as a less riot-friendly season. It’s pretty depressing that we’ve reached the point where that line of thought makes sense.
Here’s the real tragedy of Ferguson, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Charlotte, and any other cities that haven’t yet been sacked but soon may be. Taken in themselves, the problems that drive this frustration are reasonably soluble. Unfortunately, just about everyone seems to prefer narrative-peddling to problem-solving. It’s easier and more fun.
As we all double down on our rightness, soluble problems morph into massive, mangled webs of anger and angst, and American cities go on burning.
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