When the U.S. civil rights movement gained renewed momentum in the 1950’s, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as the most prominent voice and face of the movement. Dr. King was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and espoused non-violent civil disobedience as the method for achieving the objectives of the movement. If you watch videos of the famous marches led by Dr. King and his supporters, you will notice that the people marching in the street were peaceful, often arm-in-arm, often singing. The anger in those clips is observed on the sidewalks – from on-lookers and law enforcement – who are often seen yelling, spitting, throwing things and even using fire hoses and police dogs to discourage the marchers.
Compare that with Black Lives Matter marches and protests more than 60 years later. BLM really started in its current form in 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin, the 2014 killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO and Eric Garner in New York City, the latter two at the hands of police officers. While some BLM protestors marched peacefully, following Dr. King’s approach, others felt more aggressive tactics were justified. Looting, burning and destruction of property were the result of their activism. So, in stark contrast to the MLK marches when the peace was in the street and the anger was on the sidewalks, many BLM protests show anger in the streets and mostly confusion or horror on the faces of on-lookers.
Why the abandonment of MLK’s non-violent methods to achieve a color-blind society for today’s BLM that is quite comfortable with violence and rioting? BLM and modern civil rights activists claim that blacks have made little if any progress since the civil rights movement and MLK’s approach simply didn’t work. Well, there is data that supports this point of view. A 2019 study and analysis published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland (Aliprantis and Carroll) has compelling data that shows that the wealth gap and the income gap between white and black Americans has remained stubbornly consistent since 1960.
Since most legal barriers to equality have been removed, what is the explanation for the failure for these important measures to begin a noticeable reduction? Some on the right are quick to argue that blacks haven’t taken advantage of the opportunities presented them since the civil rights era. They claim that the playing field is as level as it is going to get and the government intentionally keeps them dependent on government subsidies, in effect discouraging them from advancing. The most fervent on the left see the culprit as “systemic racism,” which can only be addressed by eliminating all constructs linked to colonialism and capitalism and replacing them with a Marxist-style government and economic system which is responsible for the equitable distribution of resources.
More Spock posits that there are potential combinations of free-market and government solutions that, if properly implemented, should result in a more equitable distribution of both income and wealth without destroying the capitalistic framework that has created so much wealth, albeit unevenly distributed, in the United States in the past 100 years.
While there is no doubt that the capitalism that vaulted the United States into the wealthiest country in the world in a relatively short period has left certain individuals and groups lagging behind, there is no evidence anywhere in the world that central planning and government control of the majority of the means of production in a society has ever lead to a shared prosperity as envisioned by Marx and the BLM/Occupy movements. Generally what happens is that the country simply replaces a privileged corporate class with a privileged government class. And the privileged government class behaves with the same predatory self-interest that the greedy corporations did, with only a fraction of the prosperity. Logic dictates that we find ways to meet our social objectives without killing the goose that generates the wealth over which we are fighting.