Instigator / Pro
7
1762
rating
45
debates
88.89%
won
Topic
#2164

RESOLVED: BLM is a net harm to America

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
3
0
Better sources
2
0
Better legibility
1
1
Better conduct
1
0

After 1 vote and with 6 points ahead, the winner is...

MisterChris
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
One week
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
One week
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
1
1697
rating
556
debates
68.17%
won
Description

I, PRO, believe that Black Lives Matter is a net harm to America. You, CON, believe that Black Lives Matter is either net positive or net neutral.

ROUNDS:
1. Constructive (Make a case)
2. Rebuttal (Refute my case)
3. Defense (Answer my rebuttal)

RULES:
1. No Kritiks
2. No New arguments made in final round
3. No trolling
4. You must follow the Debate Structure
5. No Plagiarism
6. Must follow debate definitions.
**ANY violation of these warrants loss of debate.**

DEFINITIONS:
"Black Lives Matter/BLM" - The racial justice movement to eradicate white supremacy that has been operating from 2013 onwards, currently organized by the Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc. BLM accounts for the vast bulk of the racial justice movement from 2013 onwards.
"Net HARM" - When all positive and negative impacts have been weighed, the negative outweighs the positive.
"America" - The United States.
"SYSTEMIC racism" - racism tolerated within or perpetuated by the government.
BoP: I, PRO, have the BoP to prove that BLM is a net HARM. You, CON, only have the burden to disprove my arguments.

Round 1
Pro
#1
Thanks, RM! 

Definitions, rules, and the BoP agreement can be found in the debate description. 

1 Contention: BLM’s Misguided Agenda
“eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes (police brutality).”

BLM can not hope to eradicate all racism, so PRO interprets this to mean that BLM wants to dissolve systemic white supremacy. 

  • White supremacy is not a systemic problem in the US.
SYSTEMIC racism is racism tolerated within or perpetuated by the government. If BLM were fighting a widespread, systemic issue then black people would have unequal legal standing to a white person, but there has been no systemic supremacy after the passing of the 1964 civil rights bill

If CON disagrees, PRO asks him to provide a single example of something a white man can do that a black man can’t in the eyes of the law in 2020. 

The US federal gov employs a disproportionately  HIGH number of minority Americans: 
“The percentage of minorities in the Federal Workforce increased by 0.4 percent to 35.3 percent in FY 2014 from 34.9 percent in FY 2013, which is notably greater than the percentage of the Civilian Labor Force that is comprised by minorities (32.5 percent).”
  • Police brutality and vigilante violence are not widespread, systemic threats to black people.
Interracial violence accounts for measly 12% of homicide, suggesting there is not vigilante violence targeting black people on a notable scale. 
"Overall, killings of blacks by whites and whites by blacks accounted for about 12 percent of the roughly 6,000 homicides last year in which police had information about the race of both victim and killer"
IRONICALLY, black-on-white violence outweighs white-on-black.
“About 15.8 percent of white victims were killed by blacks last year, and 8.6 percent of black victims were killed by whites.”
The vast majority of blacks die from black-on-black crime, something BLM is notoriously SILENT on. 

  • PRO acknowledges there may be individually racist police, but data indicates white cops are no more likely to use excessive force than a black, Hispanic, or Asian cop. 
A 2015 Justice Department study of the Philadelphia Police Department finds:
“We also examined the race of involved officers in threat perception failure OISs to gain a greater understanding of how cross-race encounters may influence threat perception. We found that the threat perception failure rate for White officers and Black suspects was 6.8 percent. Black officers had a threat perception failure rate of 11.4 percent when the suspect was Black. The threat perception failure rate for Hispanic officers was 16.7 percent when involved in an OIS with a Black suspect.”
A PNAS study finds no evidence that white officers target black civilians. 
“We find no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers.”
  • PRO contends that the per capita disparity of violent encounters with police is due to crime rates and not racism. 
LawEnforcementToday gives this commentary:
“Here’s what it comes down to – the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects – no matter what that racial group is – the greater the chances that members of that racial group will be shot by a police officer.”
BJS shares more insight:
“From 1980 to 2008, the homicide offending rate for blacks (34.4 per 100,000) was almost 8 times higher than the rate for whites (4.5 per 100,000).”
LET finishes:
“Over the past decade, according to FBI data, 40% of cop killers have been black. Officers are killed by blacks at a rate 2.5 times higher than the rate at which blacks are killed by police.”
  • BOTTOM LINE: BLM has misattributed the sources of the problems facing the black community, causing increased racial tensions and national disunity WITHOUT solving violence in the black community. 
BLM has caused 4,131 towns to experience protests and riots, costing hundreds of millions by destroying infrastructure and private property and straining consumer confidence. Much of the private property is owned by black people. 
BLM has had no agenda to reduce black-on-black violence, meaning no solvency. 

2. Contention: BLM’s Ideology 

Smart decisions are the most important factor to determining your success, not your race.                             

There are 3 basic things that any race of person can do to be successful: finish high school, get a full-time job and wait until 21 to marry and have children (nuclear family). In other words, practice some basic Judeo-Christian values. 

The results speak for themselves:
“Our research shows that of American adults who followed these three simple rules, only about 2 percent are in poverty and nearly 75 percent have joined the middle class (defined as earning around $55,000 or more per year).”
  • BLM has a marxist foundation that wants to undercut Judeo-Christian values and Western ideology.
BLM wishes to disrupt the nuclear family.
“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”
BLM wants reparations, as can be seen here, here, here, and here. Reparations could cost trillions and would be unethical. 
BLM donations go through ActBlue, a democratic organization. Democrats have consistently led the most unsafe cities for black people. 

  • Not only do these policies hurt black Americans, but PRO contends that they increase racism. Undercutting American ideals and values while taking property from whites and giving them to blacks is an excellent way of breeding new racists who associate the rise of marxist ideology with black Americans. 
CONCLUSION:
PRO argues that BLM has misattributed the cause of violence in the black community to police and is promoting a marxist agenda that harms black people and incites additional racism.
PRO looks forward to CON’s constructive.

Con
#2
I do not see anywhere in Pro's entire case anything even approaching a weighing of net harm vs net benefit. Furthermore, Pro seems to be trying to present the case to us that BLM aims to be detrimental to America, not just that it's a net harm by mistake. It would be easy and lazy of me to simply take this case and ignore Pro's points, whereby I'd tell you that 'here are the net benefits, the aims are irrelevant' and I will not do BLM the disservice of letting someone slander it as Pro has, without defending it against that.

I believe the best approach to touchy-subject debates is to find where the opponents agree first, then to divulge into the disagreement as subsequent branches. So, let me start by agreeing wholeheartedly with Pro on the ideals of BLM being similar to Marxism. I am actually grateful that Pro brought this up, rather than aiming to paint BLM out to be anything close to black supremacist or with an agenda that doesn't want to defend the poor of all races. BLM only happened to hone in on 'blacks' because those ethnicities (Carribean, African etc) that fall under the umbrella of 'black' happen to be the poorest in not just the US but many nations that engaged in the enslavement and oppression of black individuals many generations ago. It is due to the fact that they are the poorest and that over time a huge multiple generation-long bias has remained against them, that BLM happens to focus on the 'black' race. Their actual focus is on the poor and those that are crushed under not just Capitalism but institutional bias against a certain group climbing up the ladder of said Capitalist hierarchy.

I am also curious what these 'Christian values' that Pro suggests are being destroyed by BLM are. I would actually agree insofar as that the racist slave traders all served regimes that claimed to be Christian. There are some old testament verses supporting that kind of hierarchy (though in OT it suggests that Semites are superior not simply Caucasians) but is that really what Pro is advocating as positive? BLM has many black Christian members (of course it has members of all races but I find it most ironic that the quintessential BLM member is probably both black and Christian meaning this dichotomy makes no sense). What Christian values are they standing against? Crony Capitalism and racist elitism? Is that what Pro is saying is Christianity and is being stopped? I'd say good on BLM for stopping that.

As for the reparations, the exact proportion of reparations could even be reduced to literally zero (yes, zero) if the system in place was completely fair and just towards the poor. Rather than go ahead and assert it isn't, I will wait to see what Pro says back to any of this.

I will form my entire line of attack and proactive points based on how Pro explains their case. At present, Pro has not explained how they are negative. Marx advocated the following:

KEY TAKEAWAYS
  • Marxism is a social, political, and economic theory originated by Karl Marx, which focuses on the struggle between capitalists and the working class. 
  • Marx wrote that the power relationships between capitalists and workers were inherently exploitative and would inevitably create class conflict. 
  • He believed that this conflict would ultimately lead to a revolution in which the working class would overthrow the capitalist class and seize control of the economy.

Okay, now which of these things do you think is the 'means' and which is the 'values'? I would say that the third part is the means and is not necessarily what BLM is or has tried to do at all. The fact that some rioters are violent and loot black businessmen even, with the looters including many rich caucasians such as star Jake Paul (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/04/jake-paul-youtube-riot-looting/) doesn't prove that BLM is inciting this 'revolutionary overthrow'. 

Instead, it focuses far more on the class struggle and as I said, it just so happens that due to past generations having such an offset against them, blacks are born into poverty and struggle very much to even have a chance to get out of it. Their education is poor, their healthcare is poor, their ability to represent themselves legally is poor as they themselves are financially poor. BLM have no beef with poor people of other races (though many poor hillbillies may happen to vote Trump, their ignorance is hardly the focus of BLM's protests), BLM have beef with rich elitism entitling people to disproportionate privilege even in law enforcement towards themselves vs what the poor get. The Marxist values aren't a negative at all, they are indeed a sign that their basis isn't racially motivated it's merely got there because the impoverished and most crushed under the system happen to be by and large black.
Round 2
Pro
#3
Thanks, RM.

Observations:
  • CON has VIOLATED the agreed upon debate structure (mentioned twice, both before and after his acceptance) by posting his rebuttal during his constructive round. Within the ruleset, this warrants loss of debate. However, PRO will forgive CON to forgo winning on technicality. PRO reminds voters that the violation of debate structure is a conduct violation regardless of the ruleset penalty.
Refutations:
“I do not see anywhere in Pro's entire case anything even approaching a weighing of net harm vs net benefit.” 
PRO urges voters to recall the PRO summary of R1. “PRO argues that BLM has misattributed the cause of violence in the black community to police and is promoting a marxist agenda that harms black people and incites additional racism.” 
In other words, PRO has assessed and weighed the aims of BLM and concluded that they are net harm.

“Pro seems to be trying to present the case to us that BLM aims to be detrimental to America, not just that it's a net harm by mistake.”
PRO believes CON misinterprets PRO’s case. PRO states BLM’s agenda is “misguided,” not sinister. 

“BLM only happened to hone in on 'blacks' because those ethnicities (Carribean, African etc) that fall under the umbrella of 'black' happen to be the poorest in not just the US but many nations that engaged in the enslavement and oppression of black individuals many generations ago. It is due to the fact that they are the poorest and that over time a huge multiple generation-long bias has remained against them, that BLM happens to focus on the 'black' race. Their actual focus is on the poor and those that are crushed under not just Capitalism but institutional bias against a certain group climbing up the ladder of said Capitalist hierarchy.” 
CON disregards the fact that BLM was founded by blacks, for blacks. Regardless, PRO observes that CON’s tangent has neither grounding in sourcing nor relevance to the resolution. PRO asks CON to clarify how these assertions refute the resolution.

“I am also curious what these 'Christian values' that Pro suggests are being destroyed by BLM are. I would actually agree insofar as that the racist slave traders all served regimes that claimed to be Christian. There are some old testament verses supporting that kind of hierarchy (though in OT it suggests that Semites are superior not simply Caucasians) but is that really what Pro is advocating as positive? BLM has many black Christian members. What Christian values are they standing against? Crony Capitalism and racist elitism? Is that what Pro is saying is Christianity and is being stopped? I'd say good on BLM for stopping that?”
PRO believes CON has misinterpreted PRO’s case. PRO references basic “Judeo-Christian values,” according to Oxford:
“Over time, the terms “Judeo-Christian” and “Abrahamic” have each become important ways of talking about the contributions of the world’s largest monotheistic religions to politics and culture in the United States.”
In other words, “Judeo-Christian values” are simply values that are contributed by Abrahamic religion in the US. 
Not all Christian ideals have been implanted into American culture, and PRO does not purport to suppose that all Christian ideals are positive attributes. PRO also does not suppose that there are no BLM members that are also devout Christians. Instead, PRO simply outlined in-case positive Chrisian values that BLM has, as a whole, attacked:
  • The family unit
  • The Protestant Work Ethic
  • Individual responsibility 
PRO also considers CON’s attack on Old Testament verses irrelevant, since the most predominant interpretation of those verses by practicing Christians today are that they do not condone slavery. PRO also reminds CON that a Christian can choose to reject certain Judeo-Christian values, just as a racist Christian can reject the consensus interpretation of the Old Testament. 
Finally, PRO agrees with CON that BLM is attacking capitalism, and PRO considers this a negative. Capitalism has reduced world poverty by 86% in 36 years.

“As for the reparations, the exact proportion of reparations could even be reduced to literally zero (yes, zero) if the system in place was completely fair and just towards the poor. Rather than go ahead and assert it isn't, I will wait to see what Pro says back to any of this.” 
PRO believes CON ignores the realistic political manifestation of reparations. PRO reminds CON that the popular forms of reparations are race quotas, affirmative actions and monetary reallocation, which PRO contends will increase racism among whites who feel cheated. 
 
“I would say that the third part is the means and is not necessarily what BLM is or has tried to do at all. The fact that some rioters are violent and loot black businessmen even, with the looters including many rich caucasians such as star Jake Paul”

PRO does not believe that looters will necessarily create a violent revolution, but PRO believes looters escalate tensions and cause millions in damages. 
“BLM have no beef with poor people of other races”
 
PRO reminds CON that he has no evidence for the assertion that BLM is exclusively about classism. PRO also reminds CON that BLM’s overarching aim is to solve white supremacy, a blanket statement that encompasses poor whites. 
 
Additionally, PRO would like to observe that the point 2 of CON’s Marxism definition is an origin of the promotion of class and collective. From this point stems the promotion of the group over the family, the reallocation of wealth from the rich and an abandonment of individual responsibility.  
 
“BLM have beef with rich elitism entitling people to disproportionate privilege even in law enforcement towards themselves vs what the poor get. The Marxist values aren't a negative at all.”
PRO requests CON to provide evidence of systemically enforced classism, and PRO requests CON to provide evidence that Marxism has created a positive impact among black communities.

That said, PRO would like to point out tangible impacts of Marxism and the disruption of Abrahamic values in the black community.
In 2010
Seventy-two percent of black babies were born to unmarried mothers, according to government statistics.

Fathers.com reports:
Children in father-absent homes are almost four times more likely to be poor. 
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states, “Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse.”
Children of single-parent homes are more than twice as likely to commit suicide.
71% of high school dropouts are fatherless.
The statistical data showed that a 1% increase in the proportion of single-parent families in a neighborhood is associated with a 3% increase in an adolescent’s level of violence.
Being raised by a single mother raises the risk of teen pregnancy, marrying with less than a high school degree, and forming a marriage where both partners have less than a high school degree.
The supplanting of capitalism would inevitably be a form of socialist doctrine, which PRO advocates would destroy the progress capitalism has made in the eradication of poverty. 

PRO looks forward to CON’s rebuttal. 





Con
#4
I don't disregard that it was founded by blacks for poor people, most of whom happened and happen to be black. I don't think that Pro has a clue what they're talking about at this point. All Pro has told you is that BLM is founded on Marxist principles and then stated a conspiracy theory that they are plotting to ruin the entire structure on which the US society is built by dismantling Christian values and Capitalism which will bankrupt US.

I guess it's my turn to actually state some facts... Not that Pro stated any other than that BLM has principles linked to the Socialist ethos of caring for the poor and downtrodden.

Black Lives Matter has always been more of a human rights movement rather than a civil rights movement. BLM's focus has been less about changing specific laws and more about fighting for a fundamental reordering of society wherein Black lives are free from systematic dehumanization. Still, the movement’s measurable impact on the political and legal landscape is undeniable.

What gets referred to as “the Black Lives Matter movement” is, in actuality, the collective labor of a wide range of Black liberation organizations, each which their own distinct histories. These organizations include groups like the Black Youth Project 100, the Dream Defenders, Assata’s Daughters, the St. Louis Action council, Millennial Activists United, and the Organization for Black Struggle, to name just a few.

Collectively, since 2013, these organizers have effected significant change locally and nationally, including the ousting of high-profile corrupt prosecutors. In Chicago, the labor of groups such as BYP100 and Assata’s Daughters, among others, led Anita Alvarez — who had inexplicably failed to charge police officers who shot at least 68 people to death — to lose her re-election bid for Cook County prosecutor. And in Florida, groups like The Dream Defenders and others helped end Angela Corey’s reign as a state attorney. Corey remains infamous for failing to convict Trayvon Martin’s killer George Zimmerman while prosecuting Marissa Alexander, a Black woman who didn’t hurt anyone when firing a warning shot at her abusive ex-husband.

The BLM movement’s work certainly doesn’t stop there. Students on the ground in Missouri, as part of the #ConcernedStudent1950 movement, helped lead to the resignation of the University of Missouri president over his failure to deal with racism on campus. BLM compelled Democrats to restructure their national platform to include issues such as criminal justice reform, and the movement contributed to the election of Black leftist organizers to public office, such as activist Chokwe Lumumba to mayor of Jackson, Mississippi.

The BLM movement’s unrelenting work on the issue of police corruption, helped incite the release of four unprecedented U.S. Department of Justice reports that confirm the widespread presence of police corruption in Baltimore, Chicago, Ferguson, and Cleveland. Moreover, the Movement for Black Lives’ publication of a watershed multi-agenda policy platform — authored by over 50 black-centered organizations — laid bare the expansive policy goals of the movement. The fact that these accomplishments have happened so quickly is an extraordinary achievement in and of itself.

Moreover, the broader cultural impact of BLM as a movement has been immeasurably expansive. BLM will forever be remembered as the movement responsible for popularizing what has now become an indispensable tool in 21st-century organizing efforts: the phenomenon that scholars refer to as “mediated mobilization.” By using the tools of social media, BLM was the first U.S. social movement in history to successfully use the internet as a mass mobilization device. The recent successes of movements, such as #MeToo, #NeverAgain, and #TimesUp, would be inconceivable had it not been for the groundwork that #BlackLivesMatter laid.

I will explain now why I pasted that, rather than type it out myself. I am now going to bullet point each thing that BLM has undeniably and severely helped the US achieve since its origin as a movement. I needed a reliable and brilliantly written source to prevent Pro saying it's baseless hearsay.

To be clear, that's only half of the article and there are far more benefits. You need to understand that BLM is not only about black people, regardless of what Pro keeps saying. It is about those on the 'bottom of a foodchain' of any kind where the upper class are being predatory towards them. The movements such as MeToo absolutely were and are inspired by the fighting spirit and 'protect the weak from predators' ethos of BLM. It is not off-topic or abusive to suggest the butterfly effect to include that.

Based on their Marxist values, many charities and causes that fight international corporate predation of vulnerable resources in poorer nations (and abusing the lack of workers' rights there) often have found themselves aligned with BLM, especially if the nations were African. While this debate is about the US, I want us to understand just how massive of a butterfly effect BLM has had internationally and why the cause supports all poor people, black or not despite it originally starting off obviously predominantly focus on the struggle of economically poor black people who were further abused by the legal system and bias against them, wage gaps etc.


^ These two articles explore concepts of workers' rights internationally and in the US inspired almost solely by the work of BLM. These rights apply to ALL races and the collective BLM movement was a massive component in pushing forth workers' rights in the US and the entire planet.

While the original laws were not entirely down to BLM, the enforcement was terrible (especially for foreign ethnicity workers in the US). If the employers felt you were outcasted, not in a Union and therefore easy to overwork and underpay, let alone avoiding safety benefits or HR protection against bigoted harassment... You were left to fend for yourself AKA nothing was done at all.

Many different movements helped this along the way, even today it's not perfect and BLM fiercely push for better enforcement of workers' rights and freedom from discrimination, obviously the easiest one to 'expose' and enforce it affirmative-action styled quotas:

Employers should identify and implement concrete steps to address and fix inequities, and endeavor to create diverse and inclusive workplaces by establishing programs and continually assessing and reworking them to reach their goals. Diversity initiatives come in all shapes and sizes.

For example, over the last decade, many businesses adopted a version of the “Rooney Rule,” a practice started in the NFL to increase the opportunities for minorities to hold coaching and management positions by requiring that teams interview at least one non-white candidate for open positions. Businesses adopting these initiatives often require at least one female and one non-white candidate to be considered among the candidates for every open leadership position.

Pro will likely retort that affirmative action only supports his case, since it's what he sees as toxic to US to force employers to hire a certain percentage of an ethnicity if 'better caucasian workers' are available. So, what is the reasoning behind it? Firstly, there's (and definitely more obviously was in the past) a core bias against workers of the race and it's blatant in how often equally qualified blacks were hired vs their equivalent qualified Caucasians. Nonetheless, it's essential for us to understand that BLM isn't trying to force 'less qualified' people to be hired, it's trying its best to ensure that blacks (and people of all kinds of 'underclass' race, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality) are able to get the best opportunity in life despite how poor their poorly funded and executed public education was, let alone how incapable they were to do homework in a ghetto home that had no Internet connection, many people per household and loud parties in neighbour's houses regularly, if not gunshots making it hard to focus on work when you feel that kind of fear and level of distraction.

It's not quite as simple as saying 'if they work as hard, they'll get as good grades' when the entire system throughout is or definitely WAS set against them. BLM has helped so much in legal, employment-based, society-based predation of underclass struggle of a variety but of course it's predominantly focused on those that involve blacks, as that's the cause's name and that group is undeniably the most impoverished (proof that blacks are most impoverished: (shorturl.at/rtAJVshorturl.at/bBQS8)

What exactly is it that Pro wants me to do? Pro starts talking about fatherless homes... Then blames BLM for encouraging the community to band together to take care of parentless youth. This is a most preposterous leap in logic. BLM are not encouraging homes to be fatherless and suggesting the community should forcibly 'take care of' each other. That is a ridiculous twisting of what Pro was even quoting or referring to. BLM encouraged broken households in ghettos to become more 'share and care' with each other. For instance, if one neighbour has a night shift but the other works by day, it can be a great way to handle the burden on the single mother. No one in BLM is stating that 'fatherlessness is optimal' and that is NOT A RESULT of BLM's work at all.

Throughout Pro's entire case, I feel like all I read is miscontruing of BLM's work. 

  • When we realise they helped blacks move towards better legal representation, Pro will accuse this of 'hurting the prosecutors of America to put criminals behind bars' despite the bias being the opposite.
  • When we realise they helped workers' rights, inspired movements like MeToo and helped inspire Latinos to fight ICE, we are told it doesn't matter.
  • When I agree they have Marxist values, Pro says no...

Round 3
Pro
#5
Thanks, RM. 

RESOLVED: BLM is a net harm to America

PRO will divide their final round into 3 sections: Observations, Refutations, and Voting Map.

OBSERVATIONS:

  • RECALL that CON has VIOLATED the debate structure. PRO reminds voters that the violation of debate structure is a conduct violation (although PRO is willing to allow an exception to the ruleset that makes debate structure violation an instant loss). 
  • This is PRO’s final round. Any new arguments made by CON should be disregarded by voters and RECALL that the debate ruleset warrants loss of debate if this rule is broken. 
  • The entirety of CON’s sources can not be found using the provided links (they are likely broken), so PRO has done their best to trace down the original source for refutations through CON’s quotations. If an original source can not be found, PRO urges voters to consider the original point by CON unsubstantiated and drop them entirely. 
REFUTATIONS:

  • “PRO CLAIMS BLM IS A CONSPIRACY THEORY”
CON’s argument immediately jumps into strawman fallacy territory, i.e. “exaggerating, misrepresenting, or just completely fabricating someone's argument.” 

PRO has not claimed that BLM are maliciously plotting to violently overthrow Western society as part of an Illuminati conspiracy. PRO has simply stated that they “attack” Western society as their default policy/political opinion, and that these attacks come with negative effects as their ideology spreads. 

  • CON cites a long snippet of this article written by a BLM activist. 
The article appears to list high profile, real world accomplishments of the BLM movement ( mostly in removing individuals from power who appear to them as racist). Unfortunately for CON, the 1st Contention of PRO’s R1 makes this point moot.

RECALL: “PRO acknowledges there may be individually racist police, but data indicates white cops are no more likely to use excessive force than a black, Hispanic, or Asian cop.”

RECALL: 
-The US federal gov employs a disproportionately  HIGH number of minority Americans
-The vast majority of blacks die from black-on-black crime, something BLM is notoriously SILENT on. 
-IRONICALLY, black-on-white violence outweighs white-on-black.
-A PNAS study finds no evidence that white officers target black civilians.

CON’s article states that:
“BLM movement’s unrelenting work on the issue of police corruption, helped incite the release of four unprecedented U.S. Department of Justice reports that confirm the widespread presence of police corruption in Baltimore, Chicago, Ferguson, and Cleveland.”

CON’s source misrepresents that data. The article takes the conclusion that “there are per capita differences in police killing rates” and extrapolates it to mean “police target certain races.” 

There is no evidence to support that conclusion. 

RECALL: “PRO contends that the per capita disparity of violent encounters with police is due to crime rates and not racism.” 

BJS shares more insight:

“From 1980 to 2008, the homicide offending rate for blacks (34.4 per 100,000) was almost 8 times higher than the rate for whites (4.5 per 100,000).”

BOTTOM LINE:  

PRO acknowledges that BLM has been able to get people fired and make people resign who they see as being racist. However, taking down people who may or may not be individually racist comes at the cost of pushing a false systemic racism narrative that heightens racial tensions and misidentifies the problems inherent in the black community, leading to no solvency. 

  • “BLM IS ABOUT SAVING THE LOWER CLASS, NOT RACE”
CON’s own source refutes them on this one:
“BLM's focus has been less about changing specific laws and more about fighting for a fundamental reordering of society wherein Black lives are free from systematic dehumanization.”

PRO repeats that CON has no evidence for his statements. 

BLM’s official mission is only for black people.

  • “BLM CREATED METOO AND OTHER MOVEMENTS”
BLM laid a “movement template” that MeToo and others used to advance their own agendas. However, aside from this, BLM has little to do with MeToo itself. CON can not properly extrapolate that BLM can be credited with the MeToo movement, as it has nothing to do with BLM’s mission or the members of the movement. 

PRO repeats that CON has no evidence for his statements. 

  • BLM BUTTERFLY EFFECT INTERNATIONALLY

The entirety of this section falls out of the scope of the debate. 

PRO repeats that CON has no evidence for his statements. 

  • WORKERS’ RIGHTS

BLM can not be credited with lowering racial discrimination in the workplace. 
 
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 accomplished this first domestically:
“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is labor law legislation that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

In 2007, U.S. trade agreements started to include non-discrimination on the list of "internationally recognized labor rights" 6 years before the formation of BLM. 

Additionally, CON brings up no valid evidence that enforcement lacked before 2013 onwards in regards to the CRA.

  • AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
“THE SYSTEM PREVENTS BLACKS FROM DOING WELL IN EDUCATION OR THE WORKPLACE, THUS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IS NECESSARY”

This is untrue. 

Affirmative action is significantly racist towards Asian Americans and significantly biased towards blacks.

“A 2009 study that found that “Asian-Americans have the lowest acceptance rate for each SAT test score bracket, having to score on average approximately 140 points higher than a white student, 270 points higher than a Hispanic student and 450 points higher than a black student on the SAT to be on equal footing.”

Yet, despite the system being literally against them, Asian Americans are outearning every other race by FAR in the US. What, then, is their strategy?

Simple. Exercise the 3 decisions PRO outlines in R1 and work hard. 

A black person who works hard and makes smart decisions will get a job. Company owners want a successful business. If a black employee performs on par or better than their white counterparts it is business suicide to not hire that black employee. 

RECALL FROM R1: “There are 3 basic things that any race of person can do to be successful: finish high school, get a full-time job and wait until 21 to marry and have children (nuclear family).”

These smart decisions do not depend on race. Remember that regardless of race, 75% of the people who made these simple decisions joined the middle class and only 2% of them are in poverty. 

Instead, CON says forget these decisions and institute a policy that assigns people value based on intrinsic characteristics (i.e. racism). The result is increased racism towards black people as Asian Americans and other groups feel cheated by the racist system CON has created. 

There is no evidence for some systemic entity keeping blacks from achieving great things, and CON has still provided none. The only setback for blacks is rampant fatherlessness.

  • FATHERLESSNESS
“Pro starts talking about fatherless homes... Then blames BLM for encouraging the community to band together to take care of parentless youth. This is a most preposterous leap in logic. BLM are not encouraging homes to be fatherless and suggesting the community should forcibly 'take care of' each other.”

RECALL R1: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”

The implication here is that the nuclear family structure is arbitrary and unnecessary. This is simply untrue, and it reflects in the state of the black community. 
So no, they aren’t encouraging fatherlessness per se, but they are dismissing it as a necessity or as a smart idea at all. Furthermore, for being the #1 issue facing the black community, BLM has been oddly silent on fatherlessness. 

In terms of ideology, BLM is thoroughly dismissive of the importance of black fathers, and it hurts the black community. 

“When I agree they have Marxist values, Pro says no…”

PRO claims BLM has Marxist influences, but is a movement to erase white supremacy foremost. CON claims BLM is solely Marxist. There is a difference.

VOTER MAP:

PRO POINTS:

  1. White supremacy is not systemic, and neither is police brutality, thus BLM has entirely misattributed the cause of the problems facing the black community. ---> NO RESPONSE ---> PRO WINS
  2. BLM has caused costly riots for no real benefit. ---> Rioters are not socialist revolutionaries. ---> Never claimed they were, but they increase racial tensions and cost millions. ---> PRO WINS
  3. Anyone can make 3 smart decisions and be successful, thus disproving the idea some systemic entity prevents black people from succeeding. ---> NO RESPONSE ---> PRO WINS
  4. BLM’s Marxist influences hurts the black community. ---> BLM’s Marxism is good because it helps the unfortunate of every race, such as preventing discrimination in the workplace with affirmative action. ---> BLM has not helped discrimination in the workplace, the CRA of 1964 did. BLM is entirely black focused. Additionally, affirmative action is racist towards Asian Americans, and yet they do better than any other race. This disproves the necessity of affirmative action while proving the necessity of the 3 smart decisions. Regardless, CON presents no evidence for his claims. ---> PRO WINS
  5.  BLM helps elect Democrats, who hurt the black community. ---> NO RESPONSE ---> PRO WINS.
  6. BLM ignores and worsens black fatherlessness. ---> BLM does not say fatherlessness is bad. ---> BLM openly dismisses the importance of fathers in the black community. ---> PRO WINS.
Vote PRO, thank you.




Con
#6
Forfeited