Byko: What Black Lives Matter doesn’t get about white people

To me, Black Lives Matter gets some of the facts right and some of the feelings wrong.

In his Sunday Inquirer column, Harold Jackson laid out some of the relevant facts.

Like most of his work, it is thoughtful and fair-minded.

In this one, one thing caught my eye: "So many white people showed up for Tuesday's 'Black Resistance March' that they were asked to retreat," he wrote, crediting the reporting of Inquirer intern Taylor Hosking.

"I need all white people to move to the back. This is a "Black Resistance March,'" an organizer shouted over the bullhorn.

The idea of white people being ordered to the back of the fuss gave me a chuckle.

This illustrates what BLM gets wrong. It acts as though no white person supports them, no white people care about their issues and their lives. The above anecdote shows that's not true.

Jackson concedes BLM lacks the traction of the once-powerful civil rights movement and speculates that's because BLM eschews "leaders," such as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., preferring to use social media, be organic and work from the ground up.

A friend of mine posted on Facebook that when Black Lives Matter says "Black Lives Matter," what they really mean is "Black Lives Matter (Too)."

He may be right, but the people driving BLM are intelligent and know what they said and why they said it the way they did.

They get furious when they are answered by "All Lives Matter," which is a perfectly reasonable and inclusive statement. BLM says everyone knows white lives matter already.

That's not particularly true and BLM's hostile, aggressive actions makes some white people think what BLM is really saying is this: ("Only) Black Lives Matter."

Jackson notes the prison population of the U.S. is 37 percent African American, when blacks account for only 13 percent of the population. Lately that's been called "mass incarceration."

And yet, that is only half the story. According to the FBI, in 2013 African Americans accounted for 28.3 percent of all arrests, double their percentage of the population. Between 1980-2008, the Department of Justice reports African Americans were responsible for 45.3 percent of homicides, which is more than three times their numbers in the population.

If the incarceration rate is higher than it "should" be, so is the crime rate. These are numbers, pure and simple.

It should go without saying, but I will say it anyway,  that the crime rate is more closely linked to poverty than to race. Poverty is the breeding ground for crime, whether Philadelphia or Providence or Provo.

Cracking the nutshell of poverty will make things a lot better for everyone and everyone's efforts should be welcomed.

No one should be ordered to the back of the bus.