How BLM-Era Antiracism Ate Itself

I don’t remember the moment I realised that the BLM-era antiracism movement was done for.

Maybe it was when I watched Ibram X Kendi in front of a crowd of adoring progressives, desperately trying to bluff his way through a definition of the word “racism.” Or perhaps it was the sight of a crowd of white BLM protesters screaming at a Latina woman to raise her fist in solidarity. Or it might have been when I read about the 12,407th word or phrase or thought that was now deemed racist.

But whatever it was, the fatal flaw was the same: a catastrophic failure to focus on the issues that matter.

In my article, The Quiet Death of Antiracism, I pointed out that even though class/wealth inequality is not the only issue people of colour face, it is, in 2025, by far the most consequential.

As Martin Luther King noted sixty years ago, focusing on class/wealth inequality would help a disproportionate number of black people with everything from incarceration rates to healthcare, it would transform the state of education and housing disparity, and best of all, it would allow for coalition building that united people by economic status, not skin colour. A coalition big enough to make a real difference.

Andre wasn’t convinced.

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Andre:

There is social mobility back to allow you to transcend class. You cannot transcend race. Poor whites have historically voting against their class interest in order to uphold white supremacy. There is a reason there are few unions in the southern states.

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Steve QJ:

You cannot transcend race.

I don't think the goal is to “transcend” race. Unless you mean to get past this idea that skin tone (“race” as most people think of it isn't a real thing) matters.

Yes, poor white people have voted against their interests because they, like many others, have been convinced that black people are their enemy. That for black people to win, they have to lose. It's the people who are doing the convincing that are the real enemy.

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Andre:

Racism trumps class every time. Just ask Oprah when she wanted to purchase a Hermes bag and was mistreated by the clerk. Oprah could have bought that store and all its inventory but was still dissed by a clerk.

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Steve QJ:

she wanted to purchase a Hermes bag and was mistreated by the clerk.

Yeah, this is where you lose me.

If, while black people are living in poverty and in neighbourhoods with high crime and are facing obstacles to their advancement through education and careers, your mind is on how Oprah is being treated by a clerk as she buys a $10,000+ bag, your priorities are badly out of whack.

Would I like to live in a world where nobody is ever rude to anybody, whether on the grounds of skin tone or disability or ugliness or a thousand other things? Sure. But if you don't see that black people have much, much bigger fish to fry right now, so much bigger that this is totally irrelevant, I'm not sure what to tell you.

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Andre:

The anecdote about Oprah was to make a point but I see you are being obtuse. I don't know what to tell you.

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Steve QJ:

The anecdote about Oprah was to make a point but I see you are being obtuse.

Or maybe your point wasn't a good one.

I'm not trying to be confrontational here. And certainly not obtuse. I didn't think your entire point hinged on Oprah. But it seems, correct me if I'm wrong, that your point hinges on the kinds of mundane indignities that, as I said, all kinds of people face for various reasons.

For us, it might be our skin, for others, it's their weight or their lack of conventional attractiveness or maybe a disability. Again, I'd love it if we could get past these indignities. But we aren't alone in facing them. And in the grand scheme of things, they aren't that big a deal. Frankly, disability is a far greater stigma in society than having the wrong colour skin.