This December, Black Lives Matter (BLM) is calling for a “Black Xmas,” which includes a categorically racist boycott of all white-owned businesses.
Specifically, BLM is calling upon its legion of supporters, which include countless white Americans, to “intentionally use our economic resources to disrupt white-supremacist-capitalism and build Black community.”
To achieve this goal, BLM is advocating a three-pronged approach of “BuildBlack: Invest in Black-led, Black-serving organizations by making donations in the names of your loved ones as holiday gifts.”
“BuyBlack: When buying items, spend exclusively with Black-owned businesses from Black Friday through New Year.”
And, “BankBlack: Move your money from white corporate banks (that finance gentrification, prisons, and environmental degradation) to Black-owned ones.”
Strangely, BLM’s Black Xmas does not include any prohibitions on looting white-owned businesses, which has become a hobby of sorts for those in lockstep with the BLM movement.
Over the past few weeks, throughout the country, we have witnessed a huge rise in so-called “smash and grab” mobs that have looted high-end luxury retailers.
Although BLM is not directly responsible for the sudden rise in looting among posh retailers, it certainly celebrated similar looting sprees in the past.
For example, in my hometown of Chicago, BLM activist Ariel Atkins advocated for, and defended, the looting of luxury retailers when she said, “I don’t care if somebody decides to loot a Gucci or a Macy’s or a Nike store because that makes sure that person eats. That makes sure that person has clothes. That is reparations. Anything they want to take, take it because these businesses have insurance.”
According to Atkins and her BLM brethren, it is more than okay to loot a white-owned business, but you better not actually purchase goods from these same businesses.
Moreover, BLM’s Black Xmas campaign “challenges us to shake off the chains of consumerism and step fully into our own collective power, to build new traditions, and run an offense as well as a defense.”
Yet, as throngs of BLM-supporting criminals loot to their hearts’ content this holiday season, are they really shaking off the chains of consumerism? I think not.
In actuality, BLM’s Black Xmas is a spectacle at best.
If BLM truly wanted to help black-owned businesses, they would immediately call for an end to the looting that has ravaged white-owned businesses and resulted in predominately black neighborhoods being bereft of drug stores and grocery shops.
What’s more, BLM’s anti-capitalist stance is in direct contradiction to its message of fostering black businesses.
BLM, whose co-founders are self-proclaimed Marxists, espouses the idea that “white-supremacist-capitalism is telling us to spend our money on things that we don’t need, to reap profits for corporations.”
However, in the next breath, BLM is literally begging us to buy “things that we don’t need” from black-owned businesses.
Are we to believe that only white-owned businesses peddle “things that we don’t need” while black-owned businesses somehow exclusively offer goods that we do need? Of course, that is not the case.
Yet, in perhaps the greatest irony of all, BLM has received hundreds of millions of dollars from white-owned businesses such as Amazon and Netflix. Is BLM going to return all of the donations it has received from white-owned corporations who push “things that we don’t need” and engage in “white-supremacist-capitalism?”
Once again, I think not.
BLM is a morally bankrupt organization. This Christmas, and forever thereafter, lets boycott BLM.
Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is senior editor at The Heartland Institute.
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