Recently I was driving through an affluent neighborhood outside of Boston and I saw more "Black Lives Matter" flags on one street than I've ever seen in totality in any black majority working-class neighborhood. If I were to presume that most of the people who live in this area are white, why do they feel the need to brandish this flag more so than black people? It only makes sense if "Black Lives Matter" were using the image of black people as a front for an upper-class religion.
It's been a running joke here in San Francisco that if we see a BLM sign in a window, it means "White person lives here. One of the good ones!" with extra bonus points if they have a trans flag in the other window.
An excellent and insightful commentary with a lot of great points about a variety of underlying sub-issues that make up the overall topic.
As we've discussed before, the thing that separates Americans is not skin color or ethnic differences, like being black versus white or Irish-American versus German-American versus Italian-American. The thing that divides us is economic class and the neighborhood you drove through is a perfect example. The wealthy and some varieties of the merely rich feel guilty, particularly if they feel that they didn't earn what they have, perhaps b/c they are the beneficiaries of generational wealth. Poor kids on the other hand, like me for example, rarely feel such guilt if we make it to the upper economic classes because we earned it through a succession of good choices, hard work, education and patience. Why feel guilt if you worked hard, followed the rules and did well as a result?
Another aspect of your theme is people who feel the need to advertise all sorts of details about themselves to complete strangers. This is most frequently an issue with leftists, although it can manifest itself among moderates and conservatives as well. The "Hate has no home here" signs gratuitously placed in people's front yards are endemic of this disease. Another example are the leftist democrats who run around with bumper stickers stuck all over the back of their vehicles, which includes the "Hate has no home here" crowd as well as the "Coexist" crew.
My takeaway from your commentary was that while some highlight racial, religious and ethnic divisions among Americans, the thing that really divides Americans is economic status. Its a theme that we cannot afford to not repeat constantly.
Yes, these signs have become a meme of their own making. While I'm sure some of the people with these signs are well-meaning, it's performative and self-congratulatory. Interestingly, none of the homes in my neighborhood with a "Hate has no home here" sign has invited a migrant family to live with them!
I live in a middle class Massachusetts town that is gentrifying into upper middle class. It’s de rigeur to display BLM signs, trans flags, and “No matter where you come from, we’re glad that your our neighbors” in Spanish and Arabic. The last one always cracks me up; there’s a woman around the corner who has one in her yard but I know for a fact that she hates both her neighbors and is in a feud over parking spots with one of them…
Anyway, to not have the signs is viewed a bit suspiciously by the town busybodies. I sort of want to put one up saying “Workers of the world, unite!” But I’m not sure if anyone would get the reference.
It’s also fashionable to complain about the lack of diversity in the town and the school. However, when people from a nearby working-class town try to school-choice into our schools, there’s always outrage that this is allowed. In fact, one wealthy mom that I know got SO upset by those blue-collar school choice kids contaminating our school that she pulled her kids out and sent them to a $40k/year private school. Of course, she has the signs in her yard and posts a lot of platitudes on Facebook - but she doesn’t want her kids associating with the poors.
Your observations and resultant point-of-view parallel mine, almost chapter and verse, Adam. A favorite quote of mine will suffice to put it into perspective.
"Being offended at things that they expect will offend Black folks is how middle-class white folks convince themselves they are not racist."
There's a house here in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn that actually has a custom-made NEON BLM sign in their second story windows: a purple neon B in the left window, an L in the center, and an M in the right window. Imagine going to all that trouble to distinguish yourself from THOSE OTHER "RACIST" WHITE PEOPLE who are, in reality, a lot less racist than you.
That's one dumb sign. The other dumb sign is "Support this Black Business."
It's the PASSOVER of the 21st century. The houses and businesses with those signs will be passed over in the next mask-wearing, foaming at the mouth, leftist and/or gang riot.
In the spring of 2021, my son and I drove down to Atlanta so I could should show him Centennial Park and Georgia Tech and grab lunch at The Varsity. We took a different way in that went through one of the wealthier spots and past Emory. In front of one of the plantation homes that had LITERALLY once been a plantation, there was a giant every-word-spelled-out “BLACK LIVES MATTER” sign. My son was just like, “Dad, I love this so much. They couldn’t be any Whiter if they tried. …Oh wait, they’re trying.” A little further down, we saw a “Hate Has No Home Here” planted on another lawn. As if he’d been staying up late and preparing for this moment, my son says, “What they don’t mention is now ‘Hate’ has to take three buses downtown because the only Hate Homeless Shelter is in the Black part of town. I’m telling you, Dad: it’s like their lives don’t even matter.”
LA is full of this I see it all the time, except in the areas that it isn't, the communities that are full of immigrants, often illegal & always poor. The funny thing is they all claim to care about us sad little minorities so much but do so much to avoid us in daily life, I learned that when watching my friends send their kids to school here, wanna see some woke white supremacy look at school stats in LA Unified. I drove by one of the few "good" schools the other day watching the parents line up to pick up their kids, it was whiter than sour cream, except for the one black mom & the two asian moms. That particular school checks to make sure the kids are supposed to live within their boundaries too, if they don't they gotta leave. Occasionally it will make the news when this happens but it has been awhile. I am sure if the rest of the city had school choice & could send their kid their these people would lose it, fast. The homes in that area have all those signs, including defunding cops sometimes but it is next to a ring or ADT one, which is ironic. Fuck the police I have my own mercenaries. I doubt any of those parents in line would be caught dead in a MAGA hat either. Most of the gentrification here is the same demographic with minorities paying the price, this city has conservatives here, even MAGAs but most live in Beverly Hills or other parts of the city. A lot of the time people don't get this fact including other conservatives. This place is a great people watching if you want to see how full of it lefty types in action. It is too bad no one really covers it in media.
Agreed. I wrote a similar essay not too long ago where I mentioned a coworker (and good friend) who hands out umbrellas when it’s raining. I don’t mention this in the article but she said to me, “it doesn’t matter how many bumper stickers, yard signs or t-shirts you own with ‘insert political statement here’ on them if you don’t have the actions to back it up. There’s plenty of ways you’re needed, just take a look around.”
She’s a single mom with two children who works twice as hard to make ends meet. And yet, she still finds a way to help those around her. I admire her for that.
They have the privilege to present fiction as reality and denounce reality as fiction before they erase it to shield from the absurdity of their own existence.
The BLM flag is also a sign like the blood on the doors of the Jews. If these elites show the sign on their property their hope is that when thugs arrive to pillage they will pass by muttering “Oh these wealthy folks are with us and are cool”- ha. They will be the first on Jurassic Park Island to be eaten by the velociraptors;)
That's how it was in my white neighborhood after the killing of George Floyd. When my grown daughter visited, she commented "We don't have black lives matter signs in our neighborhood ... we have actual black people :) "
It's been a running joke here in San Francisco that if we see a BLM sign in a window, it means "White person lives here. One of the good ones!" with extra bonus points if they have a trans flag in the other window.
An excellent and insightful commentary with a lot of great points about a variety of underlying sub-issues that make up the overall topic.
As we've discussed before, the thing that separates Americans is not skin color or ethnic differences, like being black versus white or Irish-American versus German-American versus Italian-American. The thing that divides us is economic class and the neighborhood you drove through is a perfect example. The wealthy and some varieties of the merely rich feel guilty, particularly if they feel that they didn't earn what they have, perhaps b/c they are the beneficiaries of generational wealth. Poor kids on the other hand, like me for example, rarely feel such guilt if we make it to the upper economic classes because we earned it through a succession of good choices, hard work, education and patience. Why feel guilt if you worked hard, followed the rules and did well as a result?
Another aspect of your theme is people who feel the need to advertise all sorts of details about themselves to complete strangers. This is most frequently an issue with leftists, although it can manifest itself among moderates and conservatives as well. The "Hate has no home here" signs gratuitously placed in people's front yards are endemic of this disease. Another example are the leftist democrats who run around with bumper stickers stuck all over the back of their vehicles, which includes the "Hate has no home here" crowd as well as the "Coexist" crew.
My takeaway from your commentary was that while some highlight racial, religious and ethnic divisions among Americans, the thing that really divides Americans is economic status. Its a theme that we cannot afford to not repeat constantly.
Yes, these signs have become a meme of their own making. While I'm sure some of the people with these signs are well-meaning, it's performative and self-congratulatory. Interestingly, none of the homes in my neighborhood with a "Hate has no home here" sign has invited a migrant family to live with them!
I live in a middle class Massachusetts town that is gentrifying into upper middle class. It’s de rigeur to display BLM signs, trans flags, and “No matter where you come from, we’re glad that your our neighbors” in Spanish and Arabic. The last one always cracks me up; there’s a woman around the corner who has one in her yard but I know for a fact that she hates both her neighbors and is in a feud over parking spots with one of them…
Anyway, to not have the signs is viewed a bit suspiciously by the town busybodies. I sort of want to put one up saying “Workers of the world, unite!” But I’m not sure if anyone would get the reference.
It’s also fashionable to complain about the lack of diversity in the town and the school. However, when people from a nearby working-class town try to school-choice into our schools, there’s always outrage that this is allowed. In fact, one wealthy mom that I know got SO upset by those blue-collar school choice kids contaminating our school that she pulled her kids out and sent them to a $40k/year private school. Of course, she has the signs in her yard and posts a lot of platitudes on Facebook - but she doesn’t want her kids associating with the poors.
Your observations and resultant point-of-view parallel mine, almost chapter and verse, Adam. A favorite quote of mine will suffice to put it into perspective.
"Being offended at things that they expect will offend Black folks is how middle-class white folks convince themselves they are not racist."
... mask wearers are part of the same cult.... especially the ones who post pictures of themselves wearing the.
There's a house here in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn that actually has a custom-made NEON BLM sign in their second story windows: a purple neon B in the left window, an L in the center, and an M in the right window. Imagine going to all that trouble to distinguish yourself from THOSE OTHER "RACIST" WHITE PEOPLE who are, in reality, a lot less racist than you.
That's one dumb sign. The other dumb sign is "Support this Black Business."
It's the PASSOVER of the 21st century. The houses and businesses with those signs will be passed over in the next mask-wearing, foaming at the mouth, leftist and/or gang riot.
In the spring of 2021, my son and I drove down to Atlanta so I could should show him Centennial Park and Georgia Tech and grab lunch at The Varsity. We took a different way in that went through one of the wealthier spots and past Emory. In front of one of the plantation homes that had LITERALLY once been a plantation, there was a giant every-word-spelled-out “BLACK LIVES MATTER” sign. My son was just like, “Dad, I love this so much. They couldn’t be any Whiter if they tried. …Oh wait, they’re trying.” A little further down, we saw a “Hate Has No Home Here” planted on another lawn. As if he’d been staying up late and preparing for this moment, my son says, “What they don’t mention is now ‘Hate’ has to take three buses downtown because the only Hate Homeless Shelter is in the Black part of town. I’m telling you, Dad: it’s like their lives don’t even matter.”
If you haven't yet, I recommend White Guilt by Shelby Steele on this very topic.
One of your better pieces, Adam. Clear and concise.
LA is full of this I see it all the time, except in the areas that it isn't, the communities that are full of immigrants, often illegal & always poor. The funny thing is they all claim to care about us sad little minorities so much but do so much to avoid us in daily life, I learned that when watching my friends send their kids to school here, wanna see some woke white supremacy look at school stats in LA Unified. I drove by one of the few "good" schools the other day watching the parents line up to pick up their kids, it was whiter than sour cream, except for the one black mom & the two asian moms. That particular school checks to make sure the kids are supposed to live within their boundaries too, if they don't they gotta leave. Occasionally it will make the news when this happens but it has been awhile. I am sure if the rest of the city had school choice & could send their kid their these people would lose it, fast. The homes in that area have all those signs, including defunding cops sometimes but it is next to a ring or ADT one, which is ironic. Fuck the police I have my own mercenaries. I doubt any of those parents in line would be caught dead in a MAGA hat either. Most of the gentrification here is the same demographic with minorities paying the price, this city has conservatives here, even MAGAs but most live in Beverly Hills or other parts of the city. A lot of the time people don't get this fact including other conservatives. This place is a great people watching if you want to see how full of it lefty types in action. It is too bad no one really covers it in media.
Agreed. I wrote a similar essay not too long ago where I mentioned a coworker (and good friend) who hands out umbrellas when it’s raining. I don’t mention this in the article but she said to me, “it doesn’t matter how many bumper stickers, yard signs or t-shirts you own with ‘insert political statement here’ on them if you don’t have the actions to back it up. There’s plenty of ways you’re needed, just take a look around.”
She’s a single mom with two children who works twice as hard to make ends meet. And yet, she still finds a way to help those around her. I admire her for that.
They have the privilege to present fiction as reality and denounce reality as fiction before they erase it to shield from the absurdity of their own existence.
Love this post!
The BLM flag is also a sign like the blood on the doors of the Jews. If these elites show the sign on their property their hope is that when thugs arrive to pillage they will pass by muttering “Oh these wealthy folks are with us and are cool”- ha. They will be the first on Jurassic Park Island to be eaten by the velociraptors;)
Virtue signaling is almost always a coverup for something. Genuinely good people don't feel the need to do it, they demonstrate it with their actions.
That's how it was in my white neighborhood after the killing of George Floyd. When my grown daughter visited, she commented "We don't have black lives matter signs in our neighborhood ... we have actual black people :) "