I recently had occasion to be asked to make a public statement in support of the current, rather amorphous demands being made in the streets by organizations with deceptive names such as "Black Lives Matter" (but not to BLM, apparently) and "Anti-Fa" (which is fascist, top to bottom). Coming out in support of these demands for something having to do with race... or police... or prejudice... or public monuments... or something... are presented by the majority press and "conventional wisdom" as being an absolute requirement for any moral legitimacy, especially if you happen to have white skin. My gut reaction to being asked to make such a statement of support, as you may have guessed, was not "No", but rather, "Hell no!". 

Hillsdale College, a fabulous educational institution - probably the best liberal arts college in the nation - has faced a similar dilemma and issued a public statement entitled On The College and Silence. Although Hillsdale is in a very different situation, I greatly appreciate their principled reasoning on their decision to abstain from endorsement. Below are some relevant excerpts. If you feel the statement is harsh, let me explain that the shock you feel is actually just being presented with the truth, bluntly and without apology. Again, these are not my own words, but I greatly admire them:

Amidst the events of recent weeks, a number of alumni and others have taken up formal and public means to insist that Hillsdale College issue statements concerning these events. The College is charged with negligence — or worse. [...] 

The College is pressed to speak. It is told that saying what it always has said is insufficient. Instead, it must decry racism and the mistreatment of Black Americansin particular. This, however, is precisely what the College has always said.  [...] 

It is told that failure to issue statements is an erasure, a complicity, an abandonment of principle. The silence of the College is deafening. [...] There may be something deafening in the culture—certainly there are those who cannot hear — but it is not from the silence of the College...

There is a kind of virtue that is cheap. It consists of jumping on cost-free bandwagons of public feeling — perhaps even deeply justified public feeling — and winning approval by espousing the right opinion. No one who wishes the College to issue statements is assumed to be a party to such behavior. But the fact that very real racial problems are now being cynically exploited for profit, gain, and public favor by some organizations and people is impossible to overlook. It is a scandal and a shame that compounds our ills and impedes their correction.

This and other sources have helped me solidify my own objections and why I decline to endorse any such statement. Here are a couple:

1. These issues have so saturated the media that any statement, no matter how benign, has become a de-facto statement of support for the organization "Black Lives Matter", which I most emphatically do not support. Note it is the organization I do not support, which is a very different thing - in fact, I believe, a mutually exclusive thing - from the the literal meaning of the phrase itself. 
   
   I have a visceral, negative reaction to the slogan "Black Lives Matter", because, well, of course they do. The fact that it's only a partial truth (Asian lives, Caucasian lives, Inuit lives, etc. all matter too) is not really my objection. I object because no one in the public eye - absolutely no one - is saying that black lives don't matter. The statement itself implies and creates conflict out of thin air. It presupposes a falsehood, which is that the importance of black lives needs to be established and defended. It inherently relegates black lives to an underdog position. It creates and grows a conflict that otherwise simply no longer exists. I'm absolutely not saying racial tensions don't exist, that would be absurd. I'm saying that even in that context, NO ONE is claiming that black lives don't matter. There is no conflict, no point to be made that everyone doesn't already agree on. Belaboring a point that everyone already agrees with actually stops forward progress by keeping us from addressing real issues, like how do we better structure our society, institutions and lives to actually treat each other consistent with our values that every life matters???
   
   The process reminds me of when our eldest son was a young teenager in his skateboarding phase. I saw some skateboarders with T-shirts proclaiming, "Skateboarding is not a crime!". How silly, I thought, no one thinks skateboarding is illegal. Then I realized it was a marketing strategy to create unity and a tighter community of skateboarding kids - aka skateboard consumers - by making them feel persecuted. (Easy to do with teenagers!) A common enemy - the shadowy, evil Persecutors Of Skateboarders League, apparently, was simply assumed and implied - created out of thin air. That example was a marketing ploy; BLM is using exactly the same strategy as a political ploy. 
   
   
2. Corporate statements such as the ones I've received in my inbox every day for months are almost unanimously confrontational. For example, by beginning with "...we at [company X] condemn...", which inevitably establishes an "us vs them" dichotomy. The objective is allegedly to be supportive and  unifying rather than adversarial. However, the current atmosphere is so polarized that companies unintentionally, subconsciously (I hope), phrase their statements from an adversarial perspective.
   
   
3. We should ask ourselves why corporations would publish a statement of support for this cause but not others. As an example, why would a local company make a statement on the current unrest and not, perhaps, on human trafficking in the Bay Area? I frankly don't see any rational reason except that the former is in the news, which, frankly, simply rewards the rioting that has put it in the news. I'd much rather bring the latter into the spotlight than support the former. Human trafficking has very real victims and clearly identifiable guilty traders. 
   
   That reason is cowardice, plain and simple. Fear of being slandered, boycotted, sued and otherwise coerced and being too cowardly to face those risks by telling the truth...or at least not telling lies. By succumbing to the intimidation they hope to avoid being eaten by the mob (but inevitably the mob will merely eat them last).

PS: For those who are interested, this youtube video from Highpoint church, "Grace: A biblical perspective on current events", is one of the clearest and most non-partisan explanations of the cultural challenges we are facing that I have found. It is a full hour long, but everyone I've shared it with agrees that it is worth the time investment.