Garza, Cullors and Tometi insist on an unbroken continuity between Martin Luther King’s movement and Black Lives Matter. But this continuity exists mainly in the imaginations of BLM leaders.




The spirituality of Black Lives Matter, like its ideology, is difficult to pin down. BLM’s three founders are all graduates in the humanities or social sciences; Cullors was a Fulbright scholar.




Their lingua franca is the postmodern jargon of Queer postmodernism, which isn’t big in African American circles. They have used it to evolve a concept of ‘Black’, always with a capital B, which is at the same time mystical, slippery and separatist. You can hear traces of it in the Bethesda Promises, which refer to ‘racism’ and ‘anti-blackness’ as different things.




I’m not suggesting that Black Lives Matter doesn’t enjoy the support of the black community. But to grasp its essence you really need to be familiar with the theoretical underpinnings of identity politics — an inescapable ordeal for millions of young American whites, but not so much for young blacks. As a general rule, the more elite the university, the more fanatical the support of its student body for BLM.

Not coincidentally, these are also the universities in which identity politics most closely resembles what Alexandra DeSanctis, writing in National Review, describes as ‘a creed for the godless’ that takes special relish in excommunication. Hence the appeal of ritual promises.

I think we can trust the Maryland protesters to stay true to their word. They know the score. Three-quarters of Bethesda’s residents have college degrees; half have graduate degrees. The only problem is that less than three percent of them are African Americans. Where are they going to find those black neighbors to love?