Friday, April 12, 2024

What does it mean to “stand with BLM”?

Answer: not much.  Take the ultra-liberal University of Washington in Seattle.  They proudly proclaim that they “stand[] in solidarity with Seattle’s black community, the Black Lives Matter movement and beyond.”

Sidebar: what does it mean to stand with “beyond.”  I suppose when nearly every university and most corporations are virtue signaling, you have to ramp up your rhetoric.  "BLM and beyond” is better than just BLM, I guess.  Or maybe it's simply nonsensical, like infinity plus one.

In any case, UW makes clear that BLM is based on “de-funding the police.”  More specifically, “The call to ‘defund the police’ . . . is now the foremost demand of the Black Lives Matter movement.  Defunding the police is a call to strip the budgets and completely abolish local police departments . . .” (emphasis added).

Join me in the revolution

I always use the Oxford comma.  Not only does it look better—why anyone ever thought that removing it was a good idea is beyond me—but not using it can lead to confusion.  Here's a specific example of why I always use it.  

A recent article’s subtitle from the WSJ reads: “The group is in discussions with Israel over releasing 40 women, children, elderly and sick captives.”  We don't know if “the group” would be releasing only men who are "elderly and sick," or "men who are elderly" and "men who are sick," but not necessarily both.   That’s a dramatic difference—especially if you are, say, the parent of a man being held captive who is sick but not elderly.