Black Lives Matter’s Disgraceful Anti-Police Protest in D.C.

Editorial

Politics, United States

Attempting to attack double-standards in some areas by creating double-standards in others will not bring Americans together, but tear them apart.

The protests taking place almost daily around the country purporting to advance civil liberties are actually undermining them. A fresh outrage occurred today in Washington, DC. According to The Washington Post, during a small Black Lives Matter protest today outside an office of the Fraternal Order of Police in Washington, protesters repeatedly assailed the “white privilege” of FOP employees and passersby, calling out “I see your white privilege” and “use your white privilege to walk around.”

What they saw was a figment of their own imaginations. The phrase “white privilege” is itself a disgrace, a dehumanizing rhetorical sleight of hand that endows the accuser with presumptive moral superiority to whites. It elevates race above all, as though human beings are to be defined purely by their skin color, not their innate abilities, ideas and thoughts. Such beliefs apparently animated the protesters not only to block access to the FOP’s offices—including on its property—but also streets. For good measure, they also raised a Black Lives Matter flag on a flagpole in front of the building. As of 10:15 a.m., Washington DC Police had made no arrests. Why not?

The First Amendment provides the right to assembly and to free speech that protect public protests. While some may consider it more than indecent to protest at a police union building so soon after mass police killings in Dallas and Baton Rouge—in this regard, it is noteworthy that Black Lives Matter leader DeRay Mckesson brushed aside the shootings in Dallas—America is of course a free country. Nevertheless, the right to protest does not include rights to block public streets, to occupy private property, or to engage in what the mainstream media would surely describe as racist harassment if directed at African-Americans by white protesters in other circumstances.

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