Keep 'Black Lives Matter' textbook on the shelf

IT'S BACK-TO-SCHOOL time and I wonder if you'd like to have your kids learning from the hot new textbook titled Black Lives Matter. We may have the chance here in the Philadelphia area. Of course, you may have a lot of questions about whether this new group deserves a textbook and a place in your child's classroom.

On my radio show, I interviewed Duchess Harris, an associate professor of American studies at Macalester College in Minnesota, and an author of this new textbook. Harris and I jousted over whether this book would be merely indoctrination. After this interview, I believe it will.

Harris told me the book would be balanced, but she said there would no opposing views of the critics of the movement. She says the purpose of the book will be to allow students to understand the genesis of the movement, and events like the shooting of Michael Brown will be the core of the material.

Since the book will not offer up opposing points of view around this group, let me offer some. First, with all the areas of study vying for attention in schools, why does this outlier group deserve a textbook? This is not the civil-rights movement of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. It is not a worthy successor to true heroes who changed America for all of us.

The Rev. Barbara Reynolds, a civil-rights activist in the 1960s and author of a biography of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, writing in the Washington Post said: "But at protests today, it is difficult to distinguish legitimate activists from the mob actors who burn and loot. The demonstrations are peppered with hate speech, profanity and guys with sagging pants that show their underwear. Even if the BLM activists aren't the ones participating in the boorish language and dress, neither are they condemning it."

My take is that the BLM movement reminds me very much of the Occupy movement. Their chief goal is to shout people down and shut public places down. Remember when they shouted down singing children at the Philadelphia City Hall Christmas event? Remember when they seized the microphone from Sen. Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally? Remember when they booed Martin O'Malley off the stage for saying the dreaded "All lives matter"? You can't have meaningful, change-focused dialogue if the talk is all one-sided.

This textbook and this movement is also based on a lie. Jason Riley of the Wall Street Journal, speaking of BLM, wrote, "It was founded on one falsehood - that a Ferguson, Mo., police officer shot a black suspect who was trying to surrender - and it is perpetuated by another: that trigger-happy cops are filling our morgues with young black men." While the movement continues to perpetuate this narrative, they strike back at anyone who wants to raise the issue of black-on-black crime and the threat it poses to black citizens.

Riley, writing in the same column, cites former New York City Police Detective Edward Conlon, who recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that "Every year, the casualty count of black-on-black crime is twice that of the death toll of 9/11. I don't understand how a movement called 'Black Lives Matter' can ignore the leading cause of death among young black men in the U.S., which is homicide by their peers."

These facts may not be hard to understand when you consider that on their Facebook page and at various events, the BLM leaders have been supportive of convicted cop killers Mumia Abu Jamal and Assata Shakur. It is also a fair point to question how much of their rhetoric is helping to fuel the wave of police killings across the country.

I've gone a whole column without getting into the debate over how saying "All Lives Matter" as a rejoinder to BLM is a racist statement. I'll let the textbook sort that out. However, just remember the leaders of this movement are not Martin Luther King Jr. and Michael Brown is not Emmett Till.

9 a.m. to noon on WPHT (1210-AM) Radio. Contact Dom at www.domgiordano.com, and sign up for the free "Insiders Club" e-newsletter.