Ruined Leon is a Black American YouTuber, who takes delight in criticising some of the stupid, ridiculous and offensive attitudes promoted by the ‘woke’. I think he’s said he’s bi, and so attacks the extremist nonsense spouted by certain sections of the gay community. He certainly didn’t hold back when telling his viewers exactly what he thought of the American non-binary college prof, now on administrative leave, who decided to reach out to the MAP community. That’s Minor Attracted People, or paedophiles to you and me. He told them exactly what they are. He posted another video expressing his astonishment when the college’s students started protesting against this attempted rehabilitation of dangerous pervs. He thought they’d been indoctrinated into being too accepting, and would have been behind it. But I think it’s easily explainable. Gays became more accepted in the 1980s, at least in England, when the gay organisations cleaned out the paedophile advocates and stressed the difference between homosexuality and paedophilia. People were then willing to accept gay people as normal, decent members of society, albeit of a different sexuality, because they weren’t a danger to their children. Except for the Heil, that is, which still seems to want to promote the idea. RuinedLeon also hates the anti-White racism that’s also somehow seen as Black liberation or anti-racist activism.
A few days ago he posted this video responding to others, in which people said what they wanted less of in the New Year. What Leon wanted was for less Black on Black violence and murder. It’s there, and is a major problem, but the Black community and particularly Black anti-racist organisations like Black Lives Matter don’t want to talk about and don’t want to tackle it. There’s only protests and outcry when a Black person is murdered by Whites. He illustrates this with three examples. The first is Sasha Johnson, shot in the head while attending a party. There was a massive outcry at the time, but nothing’s been heard since. Not quite true. Alex Belfield posted a video saying that she was still in a serious condition, and her attackers were now on trial, pleading ‘Not guilty’ to murder. In fact Johnson’s shooting provides a very graphic example of the Black community’s silence over Black on Black violence. Before the identity of the attackers were known, we had Diane Abbott telling the world that she was shot by a White supremacist. This was against the police’s express call against speculation on the shooters’ identity. The witnesses initially said they were Black, then changed their tune and said they were White. Then they said they couldn’t tell who they were because they were wearing balaclavas.
The reason for this silence is simple, as RuinedLeon states with his second example. A cute eight year old girl, Sequoya Turner, was shot and killed by a Black man, ironically at Black Lives Matter rally. The people there were reluctant to identify her killer because, ‘snitches get stitches’. His last example is a Black policewoman, Keona Holly of the Baltimore PD, who was shot by a couple of thugs while working an extra shift in her police car. The little girl’s murder has put Black people off Black Lives Matter, as Ruined Leon demonstrates with a clip from another Black YouTuber, who expressly states he doesn’t support it anymore. Leon says he sick of people telling him that he mustn’t talk about Black on Black violence because it’s a conservative talking point. Leon states that there are no mass protests about these murders or media coverage because they don’t fit the narrative of White racist crime. Instead Black personalities prefer to talk about the excess coverage given to missing White celebrities. People of colour should expect the same concern. Which is correct, but doesn’t address the fact that this concern runs out if they’re murdered by other Blacks. Leon also shows two Black personalities on American TV stating clearly that Black Lives Matter was started as a protest against police violence. If you want to address Black on Black violence, you have to start another movement with a name explicitly about that.
Leon states that he doesn’t have a problem with the name Black Lives Matter and its call for racial justice, although when he hears it he thinks of a movement whose leader took the donations and spent it on five houses for herself. He states that Black lives don’t matter. Only convenient ones do, like George Floyd and others. He says he has nothing against protests against the cops stepping out of line. We should have a conversation about that. But the Black community should also deal with its in-house problems. He also reads out a tweet by a White, genderfluid ally, reciting the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other victims of White murderers, and demanding the decentering of Whiteness. These are now, he says, the Mount Rushmore of the Black community. Before then the only Black man anyone had heard of was Barack Obama, which is clearly an exaggeration on Leon’s part, but makes the point. But people aren’t protesting or complaining about the murders or attempted murder of the Sasha Johnson, Sequoya Taylor and Keona Holley, because it doesn’t fit the media narrative of White racial violence against Blacks. So for 2022 people should leave the notion that Blacks do no harm, Blacks don’t commit crime, Blacks don’t harm other Blacks, Black Lives only matter if they’re killed by Whites. Then we can deal with Black lives being taken unjustly, instead of only jumping when the White man is conveniently around.
This is long overdue, and I’m very glad Leon is talking about it. I can remember Black on Black violence was being talked about nearly a quarter of a century ago back in the 1990s, enough for Sasha Baron Cohen’s character Ali G to lure a senior policeman onto one of his stupid interviews on the pretext that he would be talking about Black on Black violence and the weapons ‘brothers were using against brothers’. But then there was silence.
I don’t think the fault’s entirely with the media. I think it lies with Black organisations and activists. I noticed the attitude in the editorial in issue 32/33 of the Black and Asian Studies Association’s wretched magazine which they sent me when I was doing voluntary work in the Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol. Among the subjects it addressed was the coverage of the murder of the schoolboy Demilola Taylor in London. Taylor was a 12 year old boy, who was attacked by a gang on his way home from school. They stabbed him in the leg, and he bled to death in the stairwell of a tower block. The murder shocked the nation and made national news. I was particularly horrified by it. I was bullied a lot when I was at school, and remembered the fear and anger I felt at the bullies. But not so the peeps at BASA. Their editor jumped to the conclusion that he had been murdered by a Black gang, and stereotypically screamed ‘racist’. It shouldn’t have been covered. Instead the media should have reported more of the Black people being killed by White racists. This showed their prejudice, as the report initially did not mention the colour of Taylor’s killers. When it did reveal them, it said that the gang was made up of kids of different races.
Some of this reluctance to deal with the reality of Black on Black murder probably comes from the racist overreporting of Black criminality by the Conservative press. This spread negative attitudes towards Black people and hindered their acceptance by Whites. But I also think it shows an acute embarrassment about the issue. It’s far easier for Black activists to talk about violence perpetuated by White supremacists than it is to recognise that more Black people are killed by other Blacks. That might mean that some problems of the Black community have a more immediate cause than White racism, although structural racism may well be a contributory factor. And so the self-proclaimed spokespeople for the Black community, keen to attack racism, which is a real issue, are silent about Blacks killing other Blacks. It doesn’t fit the narrative.
Well it’s time that narrative was changed. It’s time that the slogan ‘Black Lives Matter’ also includes those Black lives taken by other Blacks. And this can and should be done as part of a genuine movement for real Black empowerment. Until then, silence is violence, as the BLM slogan has it.
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