On Wednesday, right-wing media personality Glenn Beck published an editorial with The New York Times that surprisingly called on “conservatives” to show more "empathy" for members of the Black Lives Matter movement. Beck's op-ed may be a sign of legitimate progress for someone who threw an “All Lives Matter” rally just last year, but a close reading of the call for empathy should give us pause. Indeed, behind Beck's warm words are dangerous misconceptions of the Black Lives Matter movement and its goals.
For what it's worth, Beck's op-ed astutely points out that America's disaffected and disenfranchised have more in common than many acknowledge. And a prescription for more empathy between countrymen whose fates are inextricably linked is sage advice. Beck takes a turn out into questionable territory, however, in describing the form and function of the empathy conservatives should show for members of the Black Lives Matter movement in particular.
"We need to listen to one another, as human beings, and try to understand one another’s pain," Beck opines. "Empathy is not acknowledging or conceding that the pain and anger others feel is justified. Empathy is acknowledging someone else’s pain and anger while feeling for them as human beings — even, and maybe especially, when we don’t necessarily agree or understand them."
Bless his heart.
Organizations within the movement for black lives convened over a year ago and published a list of demands recently that includes: reparations, economic justice, community control, political power, investment in black communities, divestment from the criminal legal system and an end to the “War on Black People.” To be sure, Glenn Beck’s empathy wasn’t on the list.
Aside from awkwardly placing his positive regard at the end of the finish line for the Black Lives Matter movement, Beck’s editorial is guilty of something more insidious. It prioritizes a shallow emotional connection among disaffected Americans over a reckoning with America that might create real, sustainable unity.
In his op-ed, Beck is asking absurdly, "Can we all get along?” just as Rodney King famously did in the moments after three officers were acquitted of all charges for brutalizing him. It's a question one can only ask if they're actively ignoring the injustice that divides us—which is what Beck wants conservatives to do.
Beck’s op-ed is filled with other troubling nuances. In a section that’s supposed to illustrate how Beck himself grew in empathy for the Black Lives Matter movement, he conflates the protest group with relatives of the man who, in July, killed five Dallas police officers in retribution for police brutality against black people nationally.
"After the horrific shootings of five police officers in Dallas this summer, I had the opportunity to watch an interview with the parents of the gunman by Lawrence Jones, a contributor at The Blaze, of which I am the founder. I was able to see their heartache and sorrow as parents, as Americans and as human beings," Beck writes. "After the massacre, I invited several Black Lives Matter believers on my show. I got to know them as people — on and off air — and invited them back again. These individuals are decent, hardworking, patriotic Americans. We don’t agree on everything, certainly not on politics; but are we not more than politics? I refuse to define each of them based on the worst among them. No movement is monolithic. The individuals I met that day are not 'Black Lives Matter'; they are black Americans who feel disenfranchised and aggrieved; they are believers; they are my neighbors and my fellow citizens.
In that passage, Beck does a few very things. First, he conflates members of Black Lives Matter organizations with an unaffiliated criminal actor. Then he insists on their patriotism and respectability, seemingly to justify why they're worth empathy. Finally, he awkwardly attempts to separate members of Black Lives Matter from their "politics," highlighting that they're "aggrieved" while refusing to acknowledge the source of their grievance. It's a type of identity jujitsu that might be impressive if its implications weren't so dangerous.
Beck ends with a hat trick, vaguely paraphrasing who else but Martin Luther King, Jr.
“We must follow the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message and method and move away from a pursuit of ‘winning’ and toward reclaiming our shared humanity,” he urges. “We cannot reconcile with those who want to tear up the Constitution or those who want blood in the street. But we can and must reconcile of our own free will with our neighbors and friends.”
Beck’s call to action might be worthy of a McDonald’s 365 Black Award, but it falls short of anything meaningful for the Black Lives Matter movement, or black people more broadly. And while I can appreciate his seemingly earnest attempt at creating connection between the Black Lives Matter movement and his conservative audience, the kind of connection Beck says he wants is ultimately self-serving.
The empathy he prescribes is more concerned with corralling “decent, hardworking, patriotic Americans” around warm feelings, than basic civil rights. In fact, Beck dismisses the lack of civil rights for black Americans, the source of all the “pain and anger” he writes about, as something on which we can agree to disagree. The overarching goal of the Black Lives Matter movement, however, is to create a world in which its moniker is true, not one where it still isn't but everyone gets along.
By suggesting a loophole through which his readers can essentially feel sorry for black people without acknowledging the systemic oppression with which black Americans contend every day Beck may think he’s offering something revolutionary. In truth, he’s calling for something as old as America itself: the polite delegitimization of black people’s lived experiences, a benevolent white supremacy that maintains systems of oppression and peace without justice.
