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Black Lives Matter. What a troublesome name for a movement.

Semantically, I agree with the phrase, as do most Americans. The lives of black people do matter, just as much as the lives of any other race, really. What I dislike about the name is its intentionally divisive nature; it is meant to imply that the people that may not agree with the movement on an ideological level do not agree with the phrase semantically. They do not think black lives matter and are therefore obviously racist. I think it's such a nasty, dishonest tactic that spoils the chance for any intelligent discourse on the matters in consideration from the get-go, and is part of the reason why we seem to be stuck spinning our wheels on the race issue in this country. Every other discussion we have seems to be held in bad faith and we're too busy attacking each other rather than trying to formulate solutions.

Now, it is said that is the mission of the protesters and rioters: to bring resolution to the race issue in the U.S. Regarding the protesters, that position can be addressed and I will address it here shortly. Though, the rioters? That one is easy. Anyone that has not condemned the rioters yet, or views their anger as 'justified' in any way are NOT seeking resolution. You do not combat violence with more violence outside of the rubric of self-defense, and you do not address bigotry with more bigotry. 

It is my wish not to get too hung-up on names, polemics, and the obvious, contemptible violence of the rioters. Right then, so why is it that I cannot support a movement such as Black Lives Matter, even if they were to consist of entirely peaceful protesters? My main contention with the movement is their view that the United States of America is so horribly racist to such an extent that 'systemic racism' is endemic, and that the U.S. justice system is one of such systems corrupted by racial bias.

First, I'd like to say that the incident that sparked all of the recent protests, the killing of George Floyd, has yet to be determined to be a racially motivated crime. At face value the video footage unquestionably shows an instance of police brutality, as several officers and law enforcement experts have testified and disavowed such actions--namely that of kneeling on the neck in order to apprehend a perpetrator. However, nowhere in the footage is any indication of overt racism present, nor has any evidence turned up that Officer Chauvin is indeed a racist. So then, why are people protesting this on racism rather than police brutality?

I think it might be because they've bought into the ideology of BLM without giving it much thought. Every instance of something negative happening to a black person--especially at the hands of a white person--is attributable to endemic racism. I want to believe that some of the BLM supporters are doing it partially out of ignorance; they do not know exactly what it is that they're supporting. Were they better informed, they would withdraw their support immediately. Others, I believe are supporting it out of optics; it's fashionable to be an activist these days for some marginalized group, and the opportunity to virtue-signal and appear as one of the moral betters among your peers is far too good to pass up. Companies have certainly parroted support for the movement for similar reasons to maintain profit. But the rest? I believe that they are in it because they truly believe in the narrative that BLM pushes. It is my intention to challenge that narrative, so let's get to it.

------- BLM Myth 01: The police specifically targets blacks -------

If one were to tune into and unquestionably hang off of every word of the liberal news media, it would be fairly easy to be convinced that this myth were true. Cherry picking select cases, such as those of Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and Michael Brown (there's about ~30 cases often mentioned by BLM activists but these are by far the most often cited) and reporting only on them might give one the false impression that it is open season on blacks. After all, in the wake of George Floyd's death, the mayor of Minneapolis went on television to solemnly say "Being black in America should not be a death sentence.". The implication here being that it is a death sentence to be black in America. All the while people wonder why racial tensions seem to be worsening in this country: it's because the media are painting a biased picture by honing in on the most controversial, most inflammatory, most suggestive of racially-motivated violence of cases.

Towards maintaining a healthy amount of perspective, I ask that you keep the following figure in mind: 1.2 million. That is the number of violent crimes committed in the U.S. in 2018, according to FBI crime statistics. Now tell me, out of this vast sea of instances--numbering in the millions--is it wise to try and characterize the entirety of the U.S. justice system based off a few select cases--numbering in the tens? It hardly seems reasonable to me.

But this figure alone doesn't address the reason why blacks are disproportionately killed by the police. I'm astonished at how many times in the past week I've had to explain conditional probability to people to get a point across. Right, so, according to FBI crime statistics, in 2016 blacks committed 37% of violent crime in the U.S., whilst only comprising of 13% of the U.S. population. Thus blacks commit far more violent crime than any other racial group in the U.S. on a per capita basis. This is a sad truth, that is probably has a very nuanced and complex reason behind it, and it is certainly worth exploring. However, it is a simple statistical consequence that, if there are more instances of people of a particular racial group committing violent crime, then it is likely that when the police shoot and kill a person committing a violent crime, that person will belong to the aforementioned racial group. This does not necessarily mean that the police are racist--it is simply a matter of exposure and probability. If you want less black people dying at the hands of the police, then black people should stop committing the majority of violent crime.

This isn't by my own logic either. Study after study (even this recent study) has demonstrated as much as well.

------- BLM Myth 02: The U.S. was founded on and perpetuates a culture of racism -------

I find this myth in particular to be very telling of the education level and all around historical awareness that a person possesses. No one that is even basically familiar with world history would agree with this statement. The fact of the matter is that yes, the U.S. was founded and flourished in part due to the utilization of slave labor. This is hardly remarkable considering several civilizations practiced slavery. Even those that are more broadly anti-Western would be shocked to find their beloved 'noble savages' of Africa and pre-Colombian Americas frequently enslaved their weaker neighbors. To try and frame slavery as a sin that is uniquely American is to be so painfully unaware or willfully blind towards humanity's history. Whatever it takes to be part of the anti-American "it crowd' I guess.

No, what makes the United States amazing are the facts that yes, we practiced slavery and yes, it made us extremely prosperous as a nation; despite this we chose to be one of the first countries to abolish the practice and form a country on the ideological basis that every man is free. The U.S. had literally every reason to maintain slavery because of how profitable it was in the South. We went into a civil war over the issue that risked tearing the young, developing country into two, potentially ending everything that had been accomplished up until then. Critics of this notion would often point to the fact that the France was the first to formally abolish the practice and that the U.S. didn't formally abolish until the 1860s, it is noteworthy to point out that it was certainly in the first 20. Maybe this isn't particularly good enough for some, maybe their criteria for being great liberators would hold that a country has to be first 15 or 10 or 5. Fair enough. Though, I'd advise that it be recognized there are ~195 countries in the world; being in the first ~10% isn't bad at all. Even conceding that there were only ~80 countries in the world by 1900, being in the first quarter of those countries to abolish isn't too shabby, particularly when the relatively young lifespan of the U.S. is taken into consideration and that movements towards abolition began as early as 1775.

An attack on America's history wouldn't be complete with the attack on America's ideological foundation. How is it that the founding fathers such as Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin proclaim to believe that all men are created equal and possess inalienable rights while holding slaves? This is blatant hypocrisy. I will admit that this fact is troublesome and it certainly puts a damper on the admiration one may hold for these men and their ideas. I take great comfort in knowing that the founding fathers, although slaveholders themselves, at the very least knew intellectually that slavery was morally unjustifiable. To anyone that might idolize these men as heroes, or condemn them as villains, it is important to keep in mind that they were merely men living among men, at their particular point in history. As such their worldviews were shaped by whatever philosophy, science, or pervading cultural ethos was present at the time. It's all too easy for us as modern people to look back into the past and read-in mal intent, to self-righteously judge the 'backwardness' of earlier people with 240+ years of collective wisdom and knowledge under our belts that we did not earn ourselves but inherited. It's intellectual self-indulgence and arrogance of the worst kind.

Eventually, albeit ever-so gradually, the founding ideology was realized in the 1860s. Sort of. Kind of. Not really. Following the American Civil War, the U.S. suffered through Jim Crow laws for a little more than a century, Admittedly this is a blight on America's history, as there were state laws that promoted outright racial segregation, only being overturned completely with the Civil Rights Act in 1964; 56 years ago. I make a point of mentioning this, as I want to make it expressly clear that racism was a real, tangible, and commonplace problem in the United States at one time. Things have improved so much since then, but critical theory cynicism and general historical ignorance have made many of those among us unappreciative of that reality. In fact, it's so much of a non-issue that people must resort to invoking the miasma of 'systemic racism' or the spectre of 'implicit bias' in order to implicate any sort of large-scale racial issue in the U.S. We'll address that one in a bit.

As far as I can tell, the most conspicuous outcroppings of American-based, modern day racism are the KKK (all whopping 3000 klansmen) and the BLM movement. Both groups would be perfectly happy to return to Jim Crow-esque segregation of the races.

------- BLM Myth 03: Systemic racism is what's keeping blacks from flourishing -------

'Systemic racism' and 'implicit bias'; a couple buzzwords in the social sciences that have not only considerably lowered the quality of academic research in the field, but have also served as excuses for poor outcomes in black communities. Immediately out of hand, it's easy to see that systemic racism--that is racism that is baked into the legislative, judicial, and financial systems of the U.S.--is simply not a thing. And if it were a thing, sheesh...we're pretty bad at being racist. Were our country so hopelessly racist that even its institutional inner-workings were corrupt, I don't think we'd have black millionaires or billionaires. We wouldn't have blacks as cultural leaders, or even political leaders for that matter. Why, just before Trump did we not have eight years of Obama? Only in America can an idiot like Colin Kapernick make $18.5 million between 2017 and 2018 and proclaim that the U.S. keeps black people down.

When I ask BLM supporters to provide explicit examples of policy (whether that be legislative, economic, or civic) indicative of systemic racism, I can never really get a straight answer. The most often cited example is what's known as redlining; essentially banks carving out sections of major cities such as Tampa, Atlanta, and Chicago and only providing mortgages to whites while rejecting credit-worthy minorities. Many Democrats and liberals would be shocked to find out that this practice began in the 1930s as part of FDR's New Deal, but we don't talk about that part because it goes against the popular narrative. At any rate, redlining is a perfect example of systemic racism...good thing it was made illegal 52 years ago in 1968 under the Fair Housing Act and Equal Credit Opportunity Act. An analysis of the Boston metropolitan area banking data demonstrates that by 1990, banks were pretty much lending mortgages to black and white applicants at nearly the same rate; the remaining difference could be accounted by the propensity of blacks having higher loan-to-value ratios and poorer credit histories. These two variables are intimately connected to household income. We'll address household income in a bit.

Now, there is a case being made that although the redlining was done away with so long ago, current-generation blacks are still feeling the repercussions of it today. Anecdotally, the claim appears to have some validity. An impoverished black person can say that their life began well behind the starting point compared to other races. Their parents who were restricted to the projects couldn't get a good education, hamstringing their earning potential, and thus forcing them to grow up in a similarly impoverished neighborhood where the cycle will repeat itself. This is known as intergenerational poverty. According to the Brookings Institute following three simple rules will break the cycle for 75% of Americans and put them into the middle class: 01.) Graduate high school. 02.) Get any job at all. 03.) Don't have children out of wedlock.

79% of blacks are graduating high school, the lowest second only to Native Americans.

The unemployment rate for blacks in U.S. is 6.1%, 1.6 times the national average.

50% of unmarried couples w/ children will break up before the child is nine.

The first two factors and their relationship to income make immediate sense, with the third one requiring a little more elaboration; first, if you graduate high school, your chances of securing a job is increased, as is your potential to continue to higher education and in turn increase your earning potential. Secondly, if you have a job you're going to be making an income, obviously. For the third: having a child out of wedlock increases the likelihood that the couple will split before the child is nine years old; a household where there is only one parent typically means that there is only one income earner leading to a markedly less total income compared to a two-parent household.

These are the factors that lead to poorer outcomes across all races in general, the last factor is I think the most detrimental for black youth. By 1990 64% of black children were born to single mothers. Aside from the impact on household income described above, fatherlessness negatively affects the development of children in a multitude of ways. The absence of fatherhood results in poorer academic performance, increased behavioral issues, increased drug use, increased association with deviants, increased propensity towards criminal behavior, greater and earlier engagement in sexual activity, and, surprise surprise, poverty. Fatherlessness accounts for nearly all the troubles that are plaguing black communities. And yet, Black Lives Matter will maintain a position that calls to "...disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure..." on their very own mission statement. 

------- Conclusion -------

It's been about two weeks since I've started writing this post, and in that span of time more people have been injured or killed, more people have begun to kowtow to the activists, monuments have been toppled or vandalized. A good police officer faces either lifetime imprisonment or death row for stopping a dangerous criminal, all because of a DA that is giving into the pressure exerted by the mobs. Police in major metropolitan areas are calling out sick or not responding to calls because of the strong anti-police sentiment in the air. Crime in these areas is now on the rise. Statues of Jefferson, Washington, and Grant have been torn down or vandalized as an attempt to re-write history is being made. Why? Because these figures of the past fail to meet our self-righteous modern standards of virtue. A six block radius in downtown Seattle has been captured and occupied by activists and the cowardly mayor of Seattle and governor of Washington refuse to reclaim their city out of fear of the mobs. Moreover, they're reluctant to accept help from the President and the National Guard to restore order simply because of petty partisan politics.

Recently, I've purchased my first firearm. I've never been one for guns, they simply never interested me all too much. From a safety standpoint I figured that, should it ever come to it, I could always rely on the police to respond to my calls for help. After the ready willingness for the general public to relinquish constitutional rights to the government with the COVID-19 lockdown, after the failure of state officials to quash rioting in their own cities, and now that defunding police departments across the nation is on the table, it has become strikingly clear to me that owning a firearm is no longer a luxury but essential. Self-defense is my responsibility; no one will come to my rescue during my time of need. 

Hobbes wrote that a leviathan is necessary to exercise sovereign authority, to keep man safe not only from foreign conquers but also from his fellow compatriots--this is part of the social contract and an essential feature of government. These days I can't help but feel that someone's end of the contract was not upheld, and we seem closer to a state of nature more than ever before. All because of some unproven, nebulous claims of racism...Christ, I can't believe it. This lamentable fact I lay full responsibility squarely at the feet of identitarian Leftist movements such as Black Lives Matter, and anyone that has the gall to uncritically support such an appalling cause.

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China's crimes to be held accountable for:

-US intellectual property theft.
-Unjust claims of maritime territory in the South China Sea, according to international law.
-Mass persecution of Uyghrs.
-Violation of Hong Kong's judicial independence.
-Exportation of COVID-19 from Wuhan.
-Nuclear weapons testing, in violation of international law.

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There is hardly anything more that can burden my heart with hate and turn my blood into ichor than the self-satisfied spoilsport. You know the kind; there probably exists one within your group of friends. The kind of person that, when discussing the nuance and wonder of romantic love, will inevitably lead the conversation to that tired and terrible cliché: 'Love is nothing more than a chemical reaction in your brain'. When discussing metaphysics, they'll assert that metaphysics is pointless. If describing the nobility of an action, the accolades that come with honor, or the allure of beauty , they'll claim such concepts are relative values that ultimately have zero meaning in the world.

It's akin to witnessing the most sublime sunrise at 5:20am on a chilly Winter morning at the Grand Canyon, only to have Neil deGrasse Tyson interject mid-spectacle to pedantically lecture you that there is no such thing as a sunrise. We get it. You're smart. Now please shut the hell up and let people enjoy things.

More often than not this type of person is blessed with an above-average intelligence, might possess years of textbook learning under their belt, and are probably quite accomplished in their academic or professional careers within a technical field. These credentials ostensibly give this particular individual license to rob the joys out of life on their whim, and take their views on life as self-evident because those very principles have made their own lives very successful.

Whenever these types of people make themselves known, it is often in an attempt to demonstrate intellectual superiority. They attempt to debase others while elevating themselves; such displays do not impress me. On the contrary, they disgust me and smack of callowness. I say disgust because, to observe this among my peers or my subordinates, is a travesty. The youth are not supposed to be this cynical or hard-hearted. Firstly, ones younger years are characterized by a certain splendor that ought to be relished and later cherished through memory in ripe old age; to not partake in that is nothing short of a regrettable waste. Secondly, that level of 'hardness' is unearned since it is highly doubtful that they'd suffer through something so terrible that would drain the world of its color.

In essence, what drives these types of people is an overcommitment to verificationism and reductionism. Let us examine these two doctrines and see how they're misapplied by our dearest spoilsports.


------- Verificationism -------

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the doctrine of verificationism was borne from the tradition of British empiricism-- it's philosophical lineage can be traced back to Locke, Hume, and A.J. Ayer. The central idea behind verificationism is the verification principle, which states that the meaning of a sentence is given by the procedure for establishing it as true (verifying it).

So, if I were to say "It is currently my 3:00pm coffee break and this medium roast is delicious.", you could establish that half of that sentence was meaningful and the other half was functionally useless. The first clause "It is currently my 3:00pm coffee break..." is meaningful because it can be verified to be true. You could consult with a clock to verify that it is indeed 3:00pm in the afternoon, and witness for yourself that I am currently at my desk having my coffee. Now, the second clause of the sentence "...and this medium roast is delicious." is meaningless because no one cares about your coffee preference you snob there is no established way to verify deliciousness; it is a purely subjective evaluation.

Of course, verificationism was not intended to simply spoil any coffee drinker's mid-afternoon break. The doctrine was meant to reformulate several serious philosophical problems (particularly the existence of God, metaphysical theorizing, and the moral principles underlying ethics); ultimately, it concluded that philosophical inquiries were incoherent and meaningless. While the philosophical theories themselves were interesting, they were all irrelevant since none of them could be verified. Thus, the aim of philosophy was to abolish itself: there was nothing worth pursuing if science couldn't offer an answer. It is from this point in history (late 19th century) that philosophy split into the analytical and continental traditions. The analytical tradition was focused on, well, analysis. It's primary focus in the 20th century was on logic, language, and thought. Contrast this to the continental tradition, which is wonderfully synthetic and rich with theories about the self, experience (phenomenology), existence, and politics. In the former tradition you'll find philosophers like Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, and the infamous Ludwig Wittgenstein; in the latter your Martin Heidegger, Søren Kierkegaard, and of course Friedrich Nietzsche.

Arguably the most important problem that verificationism resolved was the scourge of Descartes: systematic scepticism.  Everyone is familiar with this problem on a superficial level. How do we know what is real? Verificationism renders the concern into a non-issue by establishing the following:

1. If the evidence for p is q.
2. q is the only evidence there is or can be.
3. Then p means q.

If the only evidence I have for my statements about physical objects consists in the truth of other statements about experience, that is what I mean by my statements about physical objects. Notice here that there is no gap between evidence and conclusion, so as a consequence scepticism never arises. To take it back to our example, if I assert that it is my afternoon coffee break, and the clock reveals the fact that it is 3:00pm, then my afternoon coffee break means it is 3:00pm. Armed with verificationism, it is revealed that philosophy, with its musings about 'things-in-themselves' and 'forms' creates most of its own problems because of its own inventions. In reality, these things aren't problems much at all were one to stick to the verification principle.

The problems I have with verificationism are two-fold. One, it breaks down in certain domains, particularly when it comes to the harder philosophical questions. Take philosophy of mind, for example. In this domain, the verificationist adopts a behaviorist framework: the mind is a system that receives an input stimuli and produces an output behavior. The evidence a behaviorist can have about a subject's mind is only observations of their behavior. So when a behaviorist is referring to your mental process, all they can mean is your behavior. To put it into a concrete example, suppose I sit at my desk and close my eyes, stating "I am thinking.". When I utter this phrase, I am referring to my mental process, not my behavior. But to the behaviorist I am necessarily referring to my behavior, since the only evidence I have for my assertion is my outward behavior. As you can probably tell, this is fallacious, since the outward behavior of sitting at a desk with closed eyes does not automatically mean "I am thinking.". I could be asleep, resting my eyes, or meditating. To condense this elaboration more succinctly, phenomenon that include an amount of unobservability throw a wrench into the verificationist framework.

Second, there is the problem of recursion when it comes to the verification principle itself. Once again, the verification principle states that the meaning of a sentence is given by the procedure for establishing it as true. Okay, so the verification principle itself is a sentence. How do we go about establishing it as true? By its own standards, the verification principle fails to pass its own test and is thus itself meaningless.


------- Reductionism -------

The quintessential principle that informs a reductionist worldview is, I would say, Ockham's Razor. The principle states "entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity", meaning that we should only suppose the existence of things we need to assume in order to explain our experience. Everything else is extraneous and can therefore be discarded or can be reduced even further to things that are necessary.

I often encounter this worldview when it comes to the nature of free will, so we'll use that as an example. A common argument against the existence of free will is that the action of making a choice is either precluded or very nearly synchronous with the agent entering a particular cognitive state. This cognitive state is formed by particular neurons firing and others not firing; this in turn is determined by electro-chemical gradients, which is determined by particle movements, which is determined by physics, which follow particular laws that can lead you to the first event of the universe should you possess enough information and computational power (see: Laplace's demon). This is the basis for a scientific determinism account of free will. The choice, the exercise of free will, isn't a true choice but rather yet another link in the causal chain of events of particle interactions. Modern spins on the argument incorporate quantum indeterminacy, but the outcome is the same: you don't have free will because it can be explained away by physical determinism or quantum indeterminacy.

Towards this argument I have a few questions: does it follow from this account that there is no activity of neurons that exist above the particles that compose it? From this, does it follow that there are no facts about neurons which are not facts about particles? If it does, are we entitled to say that neural activity does not exist? Clearly it does exist, so there must be some kind of quantitative difference between the activity of neurons and the activity of their constituent particles. A reductionist will say that we can posit neural activity exists, so long as we have reduced it to its constituent particles and interactions. Why must this be? Why couldn't neural activity be born of simpler, underlying processes and take on unique properties of its own that it does not necessarily share with the underlying processes?

To put it simply, the property of being more than the sum of constituent parts is known as emergence. And this is seen EVERYWHERE in nature and in all complex systems. Right off the top of my head I can think of the orderly, single-rank marches of ants following a pheromone trail, the self-perpetuating Glider in Conway's Game of Life, or the trends of the S&P 500 offering clear examples. In all of these systems a grander phenomenon emerges that has special properties of it's own that are not shared by the individual components that comprise that phenomenon. The reductionist worldview is simply not compatible with even our scientific understanding of the world.

What I think makes reductionism so in vogue with the modern intelligentsia is two reasons: one, it allows for the simplification of a terribly complex reality into nothing more than the material realm. The ability to reduce this overwhelming multi-dimensional complexity offers a great deal of comfort, but also confidence as reductionist claims are often made to affirm some foregone conclusion. So there is definitely a pitiable humanistic element to it all.

However, the second reason is anti-humanist, far less pitiable, and even deserving of contempt. People that hold reductionist world views purport to be 'revealing the truth' of the human condition and our experiences on this Earth. They smugly trot out scientific evidence with the aim to disenchant and dismean others for believing in the sublime and the transcendent. However, it can easily be seen that what they are positing is not true of the human condition and experience at all, and they only proclaim it to be true only because it is shocking. They are cheap provocateurs that get a thrill out of spoiling things for others and self-congratulatory displays of knowledge. Anyone that has ever been in love knows damn well that there is some ineffable quality to it. Anyone that has ever felt the compulsion to protect something knows that there is more to honor than reason reveals. The main point here is that, although 'chemical reactions in the brain' may hold some explanatory power towards the phenomenon of romantic love, that does not entitle us to make the statement that 'romantic love is nothing but chemical reactions in the brain.' Afterall, our beliefs in mathematical abstractions are explained by chemical reactions in the brain, but I don't think the intellectually consistent reductionist would hold that mathematical abstractions are nothing but chemical reactions in the brain.

So...knock it off. Quit being a self-satisfied prig. Add some dimensionality to your theses. Become sophisticated.

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