Black Lives Matter Movement Summary

A recently published opinionated editorial discussed some of the problems with the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM). Brendan O’neill wrote this op-ed and he also holds the position of editor at spiked, “the magazine that wants to make history as well as report it.” As a white man, his role in talking about the Black experience and in the manner in which he does it exposes his sense of entitlement by how much significance he believes his opinion has. With that said, many of his claims completely missed the point of this movement due to his lack of understanding. O’neill’s credibility becomes terribly questionable time and time again throughout his editorial because it doesn’t seem like he took the time to actually research what BLM stands for to begin with. The lack of exposure to BLM creates the perfect conditions for easily criticizing an issue he has little knowledge about in a harsh manner. He hasn’t been exposed to the complexities of these issues, in this case race and oppression, only the things that stand out on the surface. The Black Lives Matter movement is not perfect and it doesn’t claim to, but it isn’t as heavily flawed as O’neill illustrates. He doesn’t grasp that this movement doesn’t rely on white self-loathers, …show more content…
In his opinion, “[w]hat both sides share in common is a depressing, fatalistic attachment to racial thinking” (O’neill). First of all, using “depressing” loosely comes off as ableist. Second of all, BLM doesn’t base its values on racial thinking (the formulation of ideas based on perception of racial differences). As a result of racism, differences between white and black people exist. Just because race is a social construct does not mean that it doesn’t affect lives and that people shouldn’t shed light on issues relating to race. Yes, biologically speaking people don’t have many differences, but the skin deep issue of race has an immense amount of influences on