Black Lives Matter Doesn’t Need To Be Polite — It Needs Us To Remember

The problem with Black Lives Matter, its detractors will tell you, is that its activists are “disrespectful.” Critics have described BLM’s tactics as “childish and off-putting”; some have accused activists of showboating for personal gain; others have disparaged the personal appearances of activists and the “guys with sagging pants” at BLM rallies. BLM should be ignored, critics argue, until their participants can be “appropriate.” This is respectability politics. This is the same logic that tells us that women would be raped less if they didn’t dress so provocatively, that Black men would have less trouble with cops if they didn’t act like criminals. If BLM activists can’t act with decorum, these critics argue, the whole movement is reduced to shameful, ineffective, and even counterproductive rabble-rousing.

None of these claims are true. The biggest challenge faced by BLM activists is not one of decorum. The real challenge for BLM is that society’s default response to systemic trauma is amnesia, a void of memory filled by the false narrative that we live in a post-racial society. The real challenge is that, when faced with the reality of anti-Black racism, America always forgets.

It doesn’t matter whether BLM is polite. It matters that BLM finally makes us remember.