In “Black Lives Matter and the Paradoxes of U.S. Black Politics: From Democratic Sacrifice to Democratic Repair” (2016), Juliet Hooker writes the following:
The Black Lives Matter protests have, to a certain extent, rendered continued willful white ignorance about how the dehumanization of black life begins prior to incarceration more difficult to sustain. Disregard for black life antecedes fatal encounters with the police; it has its origins in the development of urban ghettos as a specific aim and consequence of state policy and in the criminalization of entire communities in order to make them subject to predatory looting by corrupt iterations of the state. A conception of acceptable black politics that emphasizes further sacrifice in the form of peaceful acquiescence to democratic loss appears both inadequate and counter-productive in such a context. (463)
Are you persuaded by Hooker’s critique? Does her perspective on the politics of democratic sacrifice cause you to think differently about the historical civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s and/or the visibly defiant activism of Black Lives Matter?
I am slightly persuaded by Hooker’s critique, however she needs to produce a plan for how she expects the black communities to move from the ghettos to more prestigious communities. Black lives are substantially worse than white life when compared directly with where they are raised and how they are perceived. It is harder to be a black person trying to come out of ghettos, than it is for white people. I agree that this is a form of criminalization of entire communities to keep black people in a separate districts from the white people, which creates segregated hatred toward the opposition. To improve black life, there must be movement and talk within the government, not just peaceful protests. Unlike the civil rights movement, the black lives matter activism is not infiltrated in the government, where policies can actually change. Instead of peacefully protesting, Black Lives Matters needs to start physical movement within the house. The civil rights movement was to gain everyday rights, however the black people were still segregated into separate communities from the white people. Today, black people have the same democratic rights as white people, but there are social injustices that need to be changed, and to do that a plan/declaration must be put in place.