The Black Lives Matter movement: Has its moment passed? 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: The Black Lives Matter movement: Has its moment passed?

In the summer of 2020, a wave of social unrest in America exploded following the murder of George Floyd. One social movement that gripped the nation was Black Lives Matter. Millions of Americans took to the streets demanding change, but sweeping change didn’t come. What was the objective? What, if anything, changed? Writer and cultural critic Fredrik deBoer places much of the blame on leftist elites. 

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Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to 5 Things. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday, September 3rd, 2023. The summer of 2020, a wave of social unrest in America exploded following the murder of George Floyd. One social movement that gripped the nation was called Black Lives Matter. Millions of Americans took to the streets demanding change, but sweeping change didn't come. What was the objective? What if anything changed? I'm joined now by writer and academic Fredrik deBoer, whose book, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, will be out on September 5th. Freddie, thank you for joining me.

Fredrik deBoer:

Thanks so much for having me.

Dana Taylor:

So it's now been three years and Black people continue to die at the hands of police, Tyre Nichols, Andre Hill. Yet the movement to reform police has effectively stalled. Why do you think that is?

Fredrik deBoer:

I think that the biggest problem has been the lack of a particularly specific policy ask. There has not been a piece of signature legislation that people have been able to rally around. I think that the George Floyd Justice and Policing Bill, which was a bill that failed twice in Congress, including when Democrats had the power to pass it, was a good model. The problem with the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, which if you're unfamiliar with it, it entailed all manner of changes. It was sort of an omnibus police reform bill. For example, qualified immunity, which is a legal doctrine that largely protects cops from accountability when they commit acts of misconduct and violence, the George Floyd Justice and Police Bill would not end it entirely, but it would've helped to make people win successful lawsuits despite qualified immunity. It mandated body cameras for federal police officers, it had all kinds of recommendations in regard to the training, hiring of police officers, et cetera.

That was, I think, a good bill. But I think that you can sort of see how the unique aspects of 2020 worked against it. Many activists saw it as sort of a watered down reformist bill and they wanted more substantial change. I do want to point out that this is not a unique moment. Many people would argue that the civil rights movement of the 50s and the 60s began to stall out a little bit after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, which remained the most important pieces of civil rights legislation in this country's history. Because those had been such incredibly important goals, and once they achieved those goals, the next step became difficult and there was factional politics about what the next step should be, and there was no clear legislative ask, which I think is still the problem that we have today.

Dana Taylor:

So in your opinion, what needs to happen to spur legislative change on a national basis, for there to be an urgency about that?

Fredrik deBoer:

The first thing that we have to look at is simply the structure of the Senate and the use of the filibuster. It is not a rational situation where Joe Manchin, a figure who was deeply out of step with the majority of his party and who represents a low population state, has such immense power in our system. This gets back to the question of a legislative ask because what the Democrats will say, sort of institutional Democrats will say is, "Well, okay, you want us to go out and expend some political capital on this issue? What do you want us to do specifically?"

Dana Taylor:

There have been local level initiatives like having crisis teams respond to behavioral crisis calls instead of having police respond to that. Philadelphia recently announced the creation of one. Have you seen change on a local level that's been successful?

Fredrik deBoer:

I mean, for a lot of things, it is genuinely too early to say because it's taken a couple of years for these things to happen. But absolutely, things like the Philadelphia legislation is something that I've been calling out for for a long time. I mean, I think part of what makes this issue so incredibly daunting is it is a classic scenario of every little unit, every police department, every municipality has its own level of police corruption and police violence and police racism, and you can't pass a federal law and just say, "Okay, police stop being racist." There just has to be a long-term, slow, sustained effort to sort of reform these police departments. But I also think that it's important to say that some of these experiments don't appear to have worked. In Portland, where they have more or less passed widespread drug decriminalization so that you merely get a ticket and then the offer to go to rehab, has resulted in spiraling levels of overdoses and homelessness in that area.

Dana Taylor:

Do you think that it's fair to say that it's happening in all municipalities?

Fredrik deBoer:

I think where there are Black people and there are police, there's going to be incidences in which Black people are at the very least policed differently from everyone else. I mean, I think that the issue is that systemic.

Now, I will say back when this was happening, when all this debate was happening, there was sort of a back and forth that you would get about are there any good cops? And some people would say, "Yes, there are some good police." Some people would say, "No, they're all rotten." But I think the proper response is it's not really relevant whether individual police officers are individually racist or individually principled or what. Because the problem here is there would be no way that it would just happen to be the case that we would see such universally different policing of minorities in America unless it was a systemic problem. And so I think the problem is getting past the notion of good and bad cops and concentrating on the fact that this is found everywhere, as in Baltimore, where you have Black people who are frequently over-policed or aggressively policed by Black officers. There's been a constant complaint in Baltimore just to pick one place. So these have to be understood as systemic issues that are not reducible to the individual virtue of individual cops.

Dana Taylor:

As you mentioned earlier, the civil rights movement took a while to get going and to keep itself going. What are the ingredients of a successful social movement that we're missing with Black Lives Matter?

Fredrik deBoer:

I think that one of the most important things is you have to have social organizations that sort of have preexisting networks in which you can tie people into. One of the things that really worries me about 21st century American life is there's been a whole lot of sociological literature saying that these sort of institutional places where people meet and gather that are not the workplace have dissolved. So for example, bowling, alone, is a classic look at this, where people used to have things like bowling leagues or Elks Clubs or whatever. The civil rights movement had the Black church. You really cannot underestimate how important the Black church was to the Civil Rights Movement. So you have to have that kind of preexisting social connection. The issue is in the era of social media, it would sound like or seem like that would be very easy. The problem with social media connections is although they're very broad and big networks, the connections are very fragile.

Dana Taylor:

So movements are often co-opted by politicians, the media, et cetera, who want to galvanize momentum for their own purposes. You say that elites co-opted social movements. Is your concern with elites taking the vocal lead on the Black Lives Matter movement and other movements that they don't cross the finish line with even the leanest legislation?

Fredrik deBoer:

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a good way to put it. I will never forget the image of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer wearing kente cloth and kneeling along with a whole big group of them to honor George Floyd. There was some people who felt that it was culturally appropriative for them to wear kente cloth, but that's not really my business. But it only means something if you then do something.

Dana Taylor:

Was the momentum behind Black Lives Matter squandered on all or nothing propositions like defund the police?

Fredrik deBoer:

I would probably start with the preamble that I 100% understand, looking at the record of American policing, looking at this reality and saying to yourself, "This can't be reformed. We need to pull this up from the roots, and we can only sort of wipe this away and try something else." And I get it. But to me, looking at policing and all of its failings and deciding you're going to simply abolish the police, which is what some people meant by defund the police, not others. But if you're going to abolish the police because they don't work well, I would make the analogy, if the water and sewer department was revealed to be full of racism and corruption and systemic problems, we would never say, "Okay, therefore we're not going to have a water and sewer department." That would be a major mistake because you can't just let sewage run in the streets, for example. I think that we can envision dramatically different versions of policing than the ones that we have today, and I think we have to be really realistic about what the outcome of defunding the police would actually look like.

Dana Taylor:

So social movements operate on a pendulum. I want to discuss the snapback. How far did the pendulum swing away from the Black Lives Matter movement and other social movements following the apex in the summer of 2020?

Fredrik deBoer:

I think there is an adjustment going up. If you look, for example, in the world of diversity, equity, inclusion, everybody in 2020 wanted to do something. Tens of billions of dollars were raised and there was a really noble desire to help. But if you are an investment bank, if you are a Ivy League University, if you are a major nonprofit, the way that you help is that you hire people. I think there's begun to be some pushback and skepticism about that kind of institutional approach.

Dana Taylor:

So what are the issues going forward? Do you think that they're nearly identical to what they were prior to the protests that peaked in 2020?

Fredrik deBoer:

I would say that the sort of structural issues remain the same. I cannot overemphasize the importance of eliminating qualified immunity that protects cops. And I've always said that the best thing that we can do for Black people or for people of color writ large is create the kind of economic circumstance in which, yes, of course we don't want people walking around with racist feelings towards Black people. But the only way to actually secure the interests of Black people is by making them economically powerful to the same degree as other races. And then they can secure their own interests and it stops mattering whether or not everybody is racist or not.

Dana Taylor:

So the question, "What about Black on Black crime?," that's frequently invoked when discussing the rate of violent deaths in the Black community. From your perspective, as the scope of the Black Lives Matter movement expanded beyond vigilantism and police violence against Blacks, did that question become a valid part of the Black Lives Matter conversation?

Fredrik deBoer:

I think that it is a valid part of the conversation. We have to understand the conditions under which this is happening. Most of the time, Black on Black crime is invoked not in a sincere way, but rather it's used as a cudgel with which to beat back talk about police violence. So you say, "Hey, it sure seems like cops kill a lot of Black people," and there's always some conservative that'll pop up and say, "But many more are killed by Black on Black crime." And so it's natural that people would be personally reticent to want to engage in those terms.

However, I think it's important to say there are hundreds of Black-founded, Black-led, Black-staffed anti-violence organizations in this country. I think one of the things that happened in 2020 is that there became a misconception that the average BLM activist was sort of a spokesperson for the entire Black race in the United States. But if you actually look at public polling, Black Americans, Black Democrats specifically, they constantly identify crime within their own community as one of their top priorities. They constantly are asking for greater resources to deal with that problem. So I would just insist to everyone that the idea that there is some sort of a contradiction between supporting Black Lives Matter and having a conversation about how to reduce crime within the Black community is a false choice, and many Black people are already working in that regard.

Dana Taylor:

In your opinion, Freddie, will the movement rise to the level of impact, the same level of impact as the civil rights movement?

Fredrik deBoer:

I would probably say that under the name Black Lives Matter, I kind of doubt it. I think that it's got a lot of baggage at this point, but the spirit that animated BLM, the anger and the dedication to fixing things, I think that that absolutely will eventually, I hope, power a movement in this country that really takes seriously these issues. I mean, the sad fact of the matter is we never run out of new, prominent examples of police violence against Black people, and I have to believe that decent people are going to continue to be outraged by that reality and come together to hopefully fix things.

Dana Taylor:

Fredrik's book, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, is on bookshelves September 5th. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Fredrik deBoer:

Thanks so much for having me.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to Cherie Saunders for her production assistance, our senior producer is Shannon Rae Green, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of 5 Things.