The fall of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization was as spectacular as its ascent.
The social justice organization devolved from the Democratic Party’s newest power center in 2020 to the dustbin of politics two years later, wholly due to its leaders’ own greed, mismanagement, and criminality.
Now, BLM is staging a comeback, calling for racially motivated violence.
The Daniel Penny trial cannot be its resurrection from the ashes. Or else, we risk another four years of racial hatred and manufactured discord meant to disrupt the Trump 2.0 agenda.
The last time BLM as an organization captured mainstream headlines, it was for its financial misdeeds.
BLM drew public investigations for misuse of the funds and public scrutiny for granting as few as $1 out of every $3 for charitable causes, despite taking in $90 million in 2020.
Leaders of affiliated BLM groups defrauded donors in Boston, Atlanta, and even the U.K.
Co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors lavishly purchased multimillion-dollar properties while local chapters couldn’t get a penny.
What a fall from grace.
In 2020, the legacy media lobbed constant praise on BLM. The New York Times penned cover pieces such as "Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History."
Tens of millions of Americans may have participated in protests of George Floyd’s murder that summer, prompting academics to paint the BLM protests and movement as bigger than the 1960s civil rights movement because it was on track to spawn "significant, sustained, and widespread social, political change."
The Black Lives Matter Global Network has existed since the acquittal of George Zimmerman following the death of Trayvon Martin in 2013.
The movement, which has always been a collection of organizations under an umbrella coalition, was largely relegated to parts of the Black community.
Black journalists turned the deaths of Blacks by police officers or while in police custody, such as Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice into high-profile news stories. BLM and other social justice groups used social media to build public outcry and organize protests.
In 2019, the now-discredited 1619 Project crafted a national narrative that America was racist from its "true founding," what The New York Times Magazine and The New York Times writers claimed was when the first Blacks landed in Virginia as slaves.
Missing was the will to move all of society to make policing and social policy changes to benefit Blacks.
George Floyd’s murder provided the opportunity to demand a racial reckoning in America.
BLM became mainstream as public support from the sports world, education, entertainment, and civil society amplified and legitimized the movement.
Every sector of society was called upon to fight racism (be "anti-racist") by replacing equality with the nebulous idea of equity.
Elmo told kids to be upstanders to racism and called for them to protest.
Corporations increased DEI hiring goals and expanded divisive bias training for staff.
Colleges and universities ramped up DEI programming, staff, and speech policing.
Philanthropy committed nearly $17 billion in 2020 and beyond.
Emotion-driven grantmaking was divorced from donor intent and best practices.
Americans poured tens of millions into unvetted causes that lacked the infrastructure, good governance, oversight, and accountability to manage the money, leading to disastrous outcomes.
Thankfully, DEI is retreating.
For the second year now, corporations have been eliminating the DEI professional class that peddled programming that delivered poor or counterproductive results.
Thanks to the recent Supreme Court decision ending affirmative action, companies are rightly scared that their practices may be illegal too, exposing them to lawsuits.
Colleges and universities are not just following the SCOTUS decision in admissions, but they’re dismantling DEI on campus by shedding positions, axing programs, and abandoning diversity statements required for the employment of professors.
Anti-DEI efforts are aided by red states defunding DEI positions and programming throughout their public institutions and their attorneys general rooting out race-based affirmative action in other educational institutions, trends certain to continue for years to come and pressuring blue states to follow.
Anti-DEI progress will be undone if a resurrected BLM successfully leverages the jury’s acquittal of Penny into another wave of social unrest as they did with Floyd.
New York BLM co-founder Hawk Newsome is already calling for "Black vigilantes" against white "oppressors."
Such violent rhetoric is not just irresponsible; it could be fatal.
President Trump expanded support among racial minorities and unified the electorate through an agenda of lowering prices, restoring public safety, and prioritizing Americans domestically and America globally.
Racial healing is underway. A reinvigorated BLM must not become a stumbling block.
Patrice Onwuka is director of the Center for Economic Opportunity at Independent Women’s Forum and co-host of WMAL-DC O’Connor & Company. Follow her on Twitter: @PatricePinkFile. Read Patrice Lee Onwuka's Reports — More Here.