Two Versions of Black Lives Matter
Open letter to Santa Clarita Mayor Cameron Smyth and Mayor Pro Tem Bill Miranda:
According to a recent report in The Signal, I want to commend you for wanting to “make clear that the city denounces racism” but I also would want you to be aware and cautious of some of the radical things the formal Black Lives Matter organization believes and practices.
For instance, if you or your staff would spend just 90 seconds perusing the “What We Believe” section on the official Black Lives Matter website (blacklivesmatter.com), I believe you will be astounded to learn that heterosexual men — particularly Black fathers — are excluded from the organization’s supposedly inclusive movement. Black Lives Matter is bizarrely anti-family.
See these direct quotes from BLM’s website: “We build a space that affirms Black women and is free from sexism, misogyny and environments in which men are centered.
“We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work ‘double shifts’ so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.
“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable.
“When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking…”
While the term “Black lives matter” is a statement of truth and worth, Black Lives Matter, as an organization, clearly has a radical social agenda that our city and its leaders should not be endorsing.
Let’s certainly affirm civil rights for all our citizens, denounce racism when it is found and support humane use-of-force reforms in police policies, but please be cautious about gratuitously affirming the Black Lives Matter organization, either personally or as voting members of the Santa Clarita City Council. There is just too much the public doesn’t know about the organization’s leaders, practices and policies.
Thank you for all you both do for our city and citizens!
Gary Curtis Newhall