Black Lives Matter

The joke about the Holy Roman Empire is that it wasn’t Holy, wasn’t Roman, and wasn’t an Empire.  None of those criticisms is entirely fair, but there was some point to it.  More recently, conservatives have noted with either irritation or amusement that MoveOn very quickly turned into an organization that couldn’t move on, remaining obsessed with a few points.  Also, the Southern Poverty Law Center is technically Southern because it is headquartered in Alabama, but it now sees itself as national in scope.  It doesn’t have much to do with Poverty anymore.  I imagine they would attempt to make a case that increased justice will reduce poverty, but that’s a pretty broad definition of helping out.  Also, they’re quite rich, with an endowment of about half a billion, much of it offshore.  It was once involved in Law, in cases against white supremacist groups, but now is almost entirely an advocacy and information-sharing group. As for being a Center, I guess that’s true.

I thought of this ability of groups to be, or become, the opposite of their names when I passed a mailbox with a “Black Lives Matter” sign this morning.  With white radicals coming in to burn cities in the context of black protests, it looks to me like black lives don’t much matter to them at all.  It’s a sad thing, but typical. Typically for conservatives, they want to get into the argument at another place, where they can’t win on PR, even if they have a very good point, in announcing that All Lives Matter.  It’s true, but it moves the discussion to an impossible place. Better to point out that whatever was the intent in its founding, it no longer fits its name.

If other opposite-named organisations occur to you, comment them in.