Oklahoma Republican Compared Black Lives Matter to KKK and He's Just as Wrong as the Million Other White People Who Have Done the Same

We really need to talk about how basic white conservatives are when it comes to making an argument. That they are racist white nationalists is a given, but what really gets me is the fact that when it comes to thinking critically, they possess all of the depth of an inflatable kiddie pool before it has been inflated. No wonder conservative lawmakers across the nation are hellbent on banning Critical Race Theory into oblivion—they hate discussing race, and anything that requires critical thinking makes their little neo-Nazi brains hurt.

So, logical fallacy is basically their lane and it seems that their favorite form of logical fallacy is false equivalency—which is why white people and Jason Whitlock (I know, that’s basically redundant) keep making this asinine comparison between Black Lives Matter and the Ku Klux Klan.

The Hill reports that during discussions on an Oklahoma House bill that would ban “critical race theory” at state colleges and universities, Rep. Justin Humphrey (R), while on the House floor Thursday, parroted the white-supremacy-for-dummies comparison while pushing his little white fragility bill aimed at protecting white feelings while making white nationalists dumber than they already are.

From The Hill:

Rep. Justin Humphrey (R) said the KKK, the centuries-old white supremacist group, was “terrible.”

“Everybody agrees on this floor that they have burned, that they have threatened, that they have destroyed, that’s what they’re famous for,” he added.

Humphrey then asked the education bill’s co-author, GOP state Rep. Kevin West if he would “agree that when people burn, threaten, kill, intimidate, that they are a terrorist group, and that Black Lives Matter meet that same description?”

The comment was met with audible gasps from some other lawmakers, before West responded, “I would agree.”

The most annoying thing about this obnoxious-ass argument is that it is built on a mountain of straw. First of all, the Ku Klux Klan is an actual, identifiable group while BLM, as far as conservatives are concerned, has basically become an umbrella term for people who protest police brutality and systemic racism, and particularly, protesters who engage in violence.

Who is Humphrey identifying as BLM? Is he talking about the BLM Global Network? Local BLM chapters? The hundreds of thousands of people who participated in anti-racism protests across the country over the last year?

Whoever Humphrey thinks BLM is, do they burn crosses on white people’s lawn? Do they bomb white churches? Force white people out of Black neighborhoods through threats of violence and acts of violence? Do they lynch white boys and men for whistling at Black women? Did they lynch several thousands of white people during America’s reconstruction period alone?

Hell, as far as I can tell, the only thing BLM protests and the KKK have in common is that in both things, police officers contributed to the violence.

Humphrey, like every loud and wrong conservative that makes the same stupid-ass arguments he does, is also ignoring the fact that the vast majority of anti-racism protests that have taken place since last summer have been peaceful. But that doesn’t matter to them for the same reason the truth of what Critical Race Theory is doesn’t matter—because all they really need to know is that these things make them uncomfortable and get in the way of their unfettered jingoism and romanticized version of what America is and has always been.

At the end of the day, history has proven time and time again that when it comes to the subject of race in America, white people collectively are always wrong—and some things never change.