From the last paragraph of a NYT article by a Wellesley professor of social sciences and political science (Jennifer Chudy) and a Stanford polisci prof (Hakeem Jefferson). The article is titled "Support for Black Lives Matter Surged Last Year. Did It Last?"
So... you never really know what white people mean when they say they support Black Lives Matter. Maybe they're only saying what they think they ought to say in order to be seen as the kind of people they want to be thought to be or maybe they adopt opinions in a perfectly shallow way that is mostly about their own vanity.
The authors acknowledge that's a big problem with the polling. Their answer is to turn away from that line of thinking altogether. They don't care about your individual values. You may be answering the poll questions like a human being who is concerned about your virtue and your reputation for virtue, and they know that's distorting and undermining the poll results. What the authors care about is the "system forcefully sustained by our institutions," and they're hoping to change it.
But is there support for changing it? The authors essentially admit they don't know. They can't know, because the poll respondents are human beings — self-regarding, vain, confused, proud, fearful. The authors want a "conversation" about political change aimed at changing institutions, but somehow they don't want the conversation to deal with the minds of the people they need to influence as they hope to change the institutions.
They need people to believe that racism is "a system forcefully sustained by our institutions." And you never know what people really believe or how shallow and selfish their beliefs are. The authors' frustration at having to talk about that is understandable — recognizably human. And, of course, a lot of people must want to change the topic of conversation away from the subject the authors insist is the really fruitful topic.
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Bob Boyd — quoting my "So... you never really know what white people mean when they say they support Black Lives Matter" — writes:
I think most white people who say they support BLM mean, "I want to help." Beyond that, their "individual values" are all they have to work with, because the fact is, you never know what anybody means when they say they support Black Lives Matter.
What does "a system forcefully sustained by our institutions." mean? What does "enduring political change" mean, specifically?
What does BLM want to change and how do they want to change it? Who is BLM? Who is deciding what needs to change and how? Do they have a specific agenda of changes? What is it?
Does BLM know the answers to these questions, but won't say them out loud because they know their their proposed changes will conflict with deeply rooted individual values held by the majority of both black and white Americans? Values they rely on to for their continued existence as a political force?
You don't even know what the respondents believe they are being asked when they're asked "Do you support Black Lives Matter."
It could be the general idea of the humanity of black people or it could be the specific organization that raises money under that name or anything in between.
The article talks about poll results and shows graphs, but I want to know how the question was asked. In the text of the article, I only see "According to data from Civiqs, an online polling company, there has been a net increase in favorability toward Black Lives Matter since 2018."
The graphs say the data is from Civiqs. But there's no link to the polls and no quotation of the question asked!
Also from Bob Boyd:
From the first paragraph of the article: "surveys suggested that white Americans, many of whom had long opposed efforts to advance the goals of racial equality, were having a change of heart"
Is that even true? That many Americans have long opposed efforts to advance the goals of racial equality? Technically yes, but it's highly misleading.
Many Americans have opposed specific policy proposals over the years made in the name of advancing racial equality, but they opposed them because they didn't think the policies would achieve the stated goals, not because they opposed the goal of racial equality itself.
In the next 2 paragraphs the authors go on to equate support for BLM with support for racial equality. Support for BLM among whites declined rapidly, they say, after "protests" spread to more than 140 cities. I do not believe this poll has shown that support for racial equality declined among whites.
I think the spike in the chart shows high support among all Americans for BLM when the movement was perceived as a new vehicle to achieve the goal of racial equality. Support fell off a cliff after BLM managed to make themselves synonymous with violent riots, burning and looting and as an organization whose only widely known policy prescription was "Defund the police!" The chart shows a sharp decline in support for a specific organization, not for the larger goal. If Defund The Police is the road to racial equality then why has BLM backed away from it? Has BLM's support for racial equality proved fickle and volatile?
Lucien writes:
I don’t imagine many white people feel invested in the doctrine of qualified immunity because it helps to keep the black man down, or are willing to accept the risk of a botched no-knock raid on their homes, so long as it happens more frequently to black people. No one seems to be in favor of cops stopping black motorists more frequently than others, or treating them more roughly — including the use of deadly force. Which is to say that there is likely broad support for many of the concrete policy changes that BLM may seek.
The more amorphous goals like “abolish the police” (which is apparently to be taken seriously, but not literally) are less popular. How many would support abolishing police unions if it meant better treatment of blacks by cops? How many would find out which political candidates are supported by police unions — and then vote against them for that reason?
On the other hand BLM the organization seems a lot less palatable, and focused on a relatively small part of the problems faced by black Americans. According to WaPo’s database about one unarmed black woman is shot daed by police in a given year — out of a population of about 20 million (sorry Michelle Obama); while an unarmed black man faces a less than one in a million chance of being shot dead by police in a given year.The risk of being shot dead by a private citizen (usually black, for black victims) is obviously much greater. BLM could do some things to help on that front, like valorizing witnesses who come forward and identify shooters, but it doesn’t.
Owen writes:
I read this tendentious mush by the Wellesley professor and my gorge rose. Of course, that’s just my whiteness reacting badly to the searing truth that I have been exploiting black folk all my life through my unconscious appropriation of surplus value through the milieu of law and custom all arranged to award me privilege, as the bourgeoisie used to do with the proletariat back when the Marxists peddled the same bullshit.
My acid test for the meaningfulness of these grand explanations is: who is doing what to whom? Specific observable actions. Not the talk of “forceful systems” with, so conveniently for bullshitters, no named individuals. If a “system” is making these bad things happen, how? There must be a policy or rule or law that somebody wrote and voted for and stands behind. Show it to me or STFU with the “systemic” crap.
That reminds me, back in the 60s, there was a trope of the hippie type character who would say something like, "It's the *system*, man."
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