By Davis Carlton

John Andrew Reasnor of The Kids Are All Blight fame has written an article on Lamb’s Reign suggesting that Christians ought to become thoroughly conformed to the image of this world and support the Black Lives Matter movement. I’m sure that Reasnor has a really good and well-articulated argument that is sure to convince skeptics. Actually no; he doesn’t. The sole reason that Reasnor gives for supporting Black Lives Matter is “It’s true.” In other words: Reasnor argues that Christians should support Black Lives Matter because black lives really do matter. If that doesn’t convince you I don’t know what possibly could. You must be an incorrigible bigot who simply hates black people. If you are one of those people and you have a few possible rejoinders in mind when you read Reasnor’s “argument,” don’t worry. Reasnor has already thought of your objections and provides very thorough explanations of why you’re wrong. The whole of Reasnor’s article is a response to potential counter-arguments to the BLM movement.

Reasnor’s first objection that he addresses is “But all lives matter!” to which he responds, “Let me try to explain this. Many people are correctable and I want to make that clear. They’re teachable, humble, and reasonable people. So I’m not trying to scorn them or insult them.” If it was Reasnor’s sincere desire not to be insulting or scornful then he has failed. Reasnor suggests that saying that all lives matter “is like going to someone’s funeral, demanding the mic, and explaining to the suffering friends and family that all lives really should be celebrated at this service” as well as being “like being a spoiled little kid who demands to get a present at someone else’s birthday party.‬ But instead of trying to co-opt someone else’s celebration, you’re co-opting another community’s visibility during their pain and suffering so you can affirm that you matter.”

Reasnor’s response is condescending and arrogant. The implication is that if you don’t understand why saying that “All lives matter” is wrong then you aren’t necessarily ill-willed, you’re just a spoiled child or tone-deaf attention whore. I sure am glad that Reasnor didn’t opt to go the route of scorn and insult! Reasnor further explains “The reason that Black Lives Matter is something I’ll say is because many people won’t say it and that often means that they don’t *really* believe that All Lives Matter. There’s a problem. It’s not the only problem, sure, but there is a racism problem.”

This gets to the heart of the issue. Reasnor simply asserts that “racism” is a problem that the BLM movement helps to address. If you happen to be one of the many trying to innocently suggest that “all lives matter,” then it might just be because you are a “racist.” Reasnor’s analogy comparing those saying all lives matter to those grabbing the mic at funerals to talk about their own suffering or children demanding that they get a present at everyone else’s birthday party demonstrates that he is completely out of touch with reality. Why is the entire nation held hostage and forced to commemorate the death of George Floyd, a drug-addicted ex-convict in police custody? There are thousands of homicides committed in the United States every year.

Why is George Floyd so important? It isn’t because he represents but one more victim of systemic injustice against black people. That narrative has been thoroughly debunked. It wasn’t because of there was anything particularly heinous about the way that Floyd died. Important facts were withheld in initial media reports that distorted the public’s perception of what transpired. While the methods used to subdue Floyd could certainly be questioned, this is nowhere near what occurred during the police shooting of Daniel Shaver, an unarmed white man shot while begging for his life with his hands up by a white police officer who was later acquitted. What about Justine Damond, the white woman killed by a black police officer in the same place that George Floyd was killed? How about the 24 year old white mother who was shot for having the temerity to tell BLM protesters that “all lives matter”?

These problems only become more pronounced when we move beyond individual cases to broad generalizations. Simply put, white on black crime is minimal in comparison to black on white and black on black crime. The idea that blacks suffer from systemic oppression from the police is a myth. If Reasnor was consistent he would have to conclude that white victims of black violence deserve far more opportunity for sympathy and expressing how “white lives matter” in which those responding that “all lives matter” would be the insensitive jerks. But this isn’t the case. Neither Reasnor nor anyone else is consistent in applying this standard when talking about how and in what ways any lives matter. A white NBA announcer was fired for having the temerity to tweet that “all lives matter” while an Indian professor at Cambridge managed to get promoted after tweeting “white lives don’t matter.”

Are we to expect Reasnor to address this blatant anti-white bias? Where were the nationally televised funerals for Daniel Shaver and Justine Damond in which white people could pontificate about how white lives matter? Would it have been inappropriate to respond that all lives matter in that context? Inquiring minds want to know, because it sure sounds like this is simply another example of an anti-white double standard.

The next potential objection that Reasnor mentions is that “The ‘official BLM website is far-left and pro-abortion.’” Reasnor acknowledges that this is true but accuses those who argue this way of the “fallacy of composition” in which parts of the whole are considered having all the same attributes of the whole. Reasnor also suggests that rejecting the concept behind BLM is analogous to rejecting the concept of grace because of a hypothetical Grace Church that is heretical. Reasnor’s counter-argument is so poor that I was honestly flabbergasted as I read what he wrote.

To begin with, Reasnor’s analogy of grace to a heretical church with the word grace in the title doesn’t apply at all to the BLM movement. A hypothetical grace church did not invent the concept of grace at all, but is rather appropriating it in a heretical manner. I’m aware of no one arguing that black lives do not matter at all, either at present or in the past. Our own Ehud has pointed out that black lives “mattered” to the plantation owners who used their labor, even if the worst among them only saw them as a source of profit. Black lives also “mattered” to the tribal warlords who practiced slavery prior to Western involvement, sold their countrymen into slavery, and continued the practice long after its abolition in the West for the same reason; profit. The BLM movement is not controversial because of the underlying basic concept of black lives mattering, but rather the baggage that the BLM movement assigns to the phrase. This is what Reasnor seemingly fails to grasp.

The “official website” does indeed detail the Marxist agenda of the BLM movement, but this reflects the movement’s aims from its very inception. The movement has not been hijacked by radicals who formed an “official website.” Reasnor contends that “The ‘official’ BLM website lists about 13 chapters worldwide while there are millions of BLM supporters and hundreds of local and decentralized BLM groups. This fact alone means that it is highly unlikely that the ‘official’ organization is representative of the whole.”

It’s easy to appeal to fictional “local and decentralized” grassroots iterations of BLM that reject the underlying Marxist credentials of the movement at large. If Reasnor wants to argue that there are BLM organizers that reject some of the underlying tenets of the BLM movement then he is welcome to cite actual examples. Until then no thinking person would take seriously any claim that the BLM movement is anything other than the Marxist, anti-Christian, and anti-white at its very core.

Reasnor provides a couple more potential objections which frankly aren’t that interesting. Suffice it to say that Reasnor has unwittingly fallen victim to the simplicity of Leftist rhetoric. Timothy Gordon, a Catholic school teacher fired for rightly calling BLM a terrorist organization has pointed out how Leftist rhetoric works. Leftists seek to co-opt simple platitudes that are true in a rudimentary way but apply radical meaning that can be used to bludgeon their ideological opponents. Gordon uses the example of a terrorist organization called “Don’t Kill Kittens” or DKK that opposes the Christian conception of the family and terrorizes people during “peaceful” protests. One could obviously oppose the organization without advocating for killing kittens, but the rhetoric of the Left is often successful at linking these platitudes with their underlying radical agenda as though they were one and same. As Gordon points out, opposition to DKK would lead to the accusation that “This monster wants to kill kittens!”

Leftists use the same tactic with the slogan “Love is Love!” This simple tautology is pressed to mean that all romantic and sexual “love” is legitimate regardless of the sex of the individuals involved. Of course this same logic could apply to literally any kind of sexual union, and this is how the Left has been so effective in pushing its agenda. People like Reasnor end up signing on to movements in order to signal their virtue without realizing all the ramifications of what they are actually endorsing. Many unwittingly endorse Leftist platitudes because their simple formulations seem innocuous enough for any reasonable person to agree. Who wants to be the one trying to deny that love really is love and that black lives really do matter, even if they don’t agree with the deeper meaning ascribed to these slogans?

The reason the Left becomes indignant when someone says that “all lives matter” is that the Left seeks to control dialogue by insisting that the only way to make right the many wrongs of the past is for black lives to matter more than those of whites. The reason that the Left doesn’t focus on the many black victims of black crimes is that it doesn’t further the narrative of systemic racism and white guilt. The same hypocrisy governs the use of the dread and sacred N-word, in which said word is used casually in conversation by the protected black class, while the its usage is strictly forbidden to whites in any context. In a similar though slightly different vein, whites are only allowed to repeat the platitudes that they spoon fed by the Left. John Andrew Reasnor’s endorsement of the BLM movement demonstrates the utter lack of discernment that is characteristic of our times. It demonstrates just how effective the Left has been at marketing the most radical ideas through simple slogans. While it is disheartening to see Christians buying into the rhetoric, I am confident that God has reserved to himself a faithful remnant that has not bowed the knee to the Baal that is Black Lives Matter.