Marco Rubio gets it, John McWhorter does not.

"This is a legitimate issue," Rubio said. "It is a fact that in the African-American community around this country there has been, for a number of years now, a growing resentment toward the way law enforcement and the criminal justice system interacts with the community. It is particularly endemic among young African-American males — that in some communities in this country have a much higher chance of interacting with criminal justice than higher education. We do need to face this. It is a serious problem in this country."

Rubio also gave a personal anecdote: "I have one friend in particular who's been stopped in the last 18 months eight to nine different times. Never got a ticket for being stopped — just stopped. If that happened to me, after eight or nine times, I'd be wondering what's going on here. I'd be upset about it. So would anybody else." [Source] 

Five stars for Marco Rubio for taking the time to understand the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and speaking in a thoughtful and instructive way about it.

If only some of his colleagues running for president could be as thoughtful and not just throw red black meat to their base to score brownie points when it comes to this issue. 

Contrast what Rubio is saying to the words of John McWhorter.

McWhorter's knee jerk essay about the BLM movement is a classic example of what is wrong with this debate. He focuses on the obvious problem of black on black crime within the community and by doing that he tries to downplay a very real problem that is one of the factors that contribute to black pain and suffering: The misconduct of those in authority  

Of course he will get a lot of shine because he happens to be black. People like McWhorter who like to say that we are the problem is the kind of Negro that America loves. 

Memo to McWhorter: Most of the people in the BLM movement (or those who support it) are quite aware of the problems within the black community, and they have been trying to do something about it for years. It is not impossible to bring attention to police misconduct and black on black violence at the same time.

"Black Lives Matter has become Exhibit A in this ideological conflict. Make no mistake, I admire Black Lives Matter. I’m just worried about it. I have never seen America getting closer to not just “talking about,” but actually doing something about, the relationship between black men and the cops. If there is one thing I have learned in 15 years of writing about and thinking about race, it is that this problem is the main one keeping America from getting past race. I was not offended by BLM’s conduct toward Bernie Sanders, quite frankly. And I consider the riposte “All Lives Matter” almost willfully uncomprehending of the issues that face us.

However, the way our smart people are covering Black Lives Matter, and some of the assumptions of the group itself, are bubble gum on our shoes. A movement cannot make a real difference in 2015 by pretending that it’s still 1965.

Here’s the problem. The going notion for anyone left of, roughly, the old New Republic is that disapproval of Black Lives Matter must come from “racism.” Charles Blow put this best, recently:

“Discomfort with Black Lives Matter is, on some level and to some degree, a discomfort with blackness itself.”

But this, even with the careful hedges, is a hasty, and even lazy, reading of the issue. I imagine there are some people out there who don’t like BLM because it’s black people making noise. But what disturbs a great many—and I highly suspect many more—people about the philosophical underpinnings of BLM is that black people in poor neighborhoods are in vastly more danger of being killed by young black men than by the occasional bad cop.

“Our demand is simple: Stop killing us,” the movement says—while people `````nationwide look on and see, especially during the summers, tragic epidemics of black-on-black homicides and maimings in one city after another. But America wonders: What about “Let’s stop killing each other”?
This year alone, in Chicago almost 80 percent of the people killed have been black. In Baltimore the figure is 216 black people versus 11 white, in Philadelphia 200 black people versus 44 white. Most by other black people....." And blah blah blah....

McWhorter falls into the old house Negro trap of seeking approval and acceptance from the majority population in our fight for social justice. When he says "while people nationwide look on and see" the people killed in places like Baltimore, Chicago and Philly, he is basically saying that we are to blame for all those killings and we have no authority to speak out until we get our house in order. Forgetting, of course, that those "people looking on" are the reason our house is out of order in the first place.

"The problem is not an America blind to racism, or even an America that thinks racism is solely the n-word, cross-burnings, and housing covenants. The problem is, I hate to say, a progressive ideology on race that confuses performance with action."

Sorry John, but if we followed your lead there would be no action at all.

*Pic from twitter.