Half of a Revolution
The Movement for Black Lives’s new platform boldly reimagines America’s government, but not its economy.
Leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement have been called a lot of things, but unambitious isn’t one of them. Last week the Movement for Black Lives released their extensive policy platform complete with plans for reparations, economic justice, communal investment, and more. However, while the platform’s scope is sweeping, its intended audience is small — it’s nearly exclusively aimed at impacting state and federal officials.
Hold on. I know what you’re thinking. “That’s what we should expect from a policy platform right?” And usually, the answer is yes. But expectations should be different for a radical group like The Movement for Black Lives.
The platform’s preamble states, “This document articulates our vision of a fundamentally different world” — a world that seeks to “achieve a complete transformation of the current systems.” Simply stated, the plan is a revolution. But, it is a revolution, which currently applies to only a fraction of America’s body politic.
The platform is laser-focused on changing government spending. The 40,000-word ode outlines how the state has irresponsibly “thrown” and “doled” out billions of dollars to bolster things like repressive police forces and harmful fossil fuels.
“These funds are given with little or no oversight,” the report reads, “and there is no accountability mechanism.” Painstakingly, the document proceeds issue, by issue identifying what reforms are necessary, which elected officials need to be targeted, and what are current examples of model legislation applicable to the state, local, and federal levels. No jurisdiction, municipality, or constituency is spared.
But the platform’s eye is so trained on public dollars, that it loses perspective on the rest of the economy. This missed opportunity is monumental. In the U.S., public spending accounts for roughly 33% of GDP or $6 trillion, whereas the private sector accounts for about 66% of GDP or $12 trillion. This is crucial, not only because the private sector is bigger, but also because it is a chief driver of the grievances both past, and present that BLM seeks to address.
The history of black people in the U.S. economy is long and troubled. From 1619–1865 slaves were used by southern plantation entrepreneurs and northern investors to power America’s modernization and industrialization. And while this broadly benefited the American economy as a whole, it also helped specific companies — like Lehman Brothers which merchandised cotton from southern slavers or Jack Daniels which used slaves’ expertise to create its whiskey. The plunder entrepreneurs siphoned from blacks was bountiful, and they continued to pump it well into the antebellum era.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Slavery By Another Name, Douglas Blackmon explains how from 1870–1941, “large corporations, small-time entrepreneurs, and provincial farmers,” used false incrimination to detain over 100,000,000 blacks in forced labor camps across the south. Iconic companies like U.S. Steel forced these blacks to mine coal, chop down trees, and make bricks. The laborers suffered from disease, accidents, and homicides. The companies made millions.
Time went on. The labor camps closed, but the entrepreneurial exploitation of blacks carried on. Deep into the 20th Century, banks redlined, slumlords robbed, and employers discriminated with great regularity. The sum of this compounded plunder is so great that today when you look at the history of racism in America, the private sector’s role in oppressing black people becomes impossible to ignore.
This huge part the U.S. economy played in the creation of racial inequality is why it’s fair to expect BLM to have spent more time addressing the need for private sector reforms. Moreover, many businesses and corporations, are actually better equipped to address several of the platforms demands. Afterall, issues like “economic disinvestment” and “deindustrialization” are tasks more suited for investors and entrepreneurs, than politicians and bureaucrats.
Now, it’s important not to overinflate the value of the platform. At the end of the day, it is basically a wishlist (as Bernie Sanders said, the prospect of passing a reparations bill is “nil”.) But beyond its immediate practicality, the platform does serve the important role of shaping political imaginations. It gives Americans something to shoot for. Here, BLM has done a great job of articulating a bold new vision for the American public sector. But if the coalition is to ever achieve its goal of a “complete transformation of the current systems,” it’s going to have to spend some more time reimagining the role of private sector too.
