Black Lives Matter activists in Louisville, Kentucky, shouted abuse at a group of middle-school cheerleaders during a protest on Saturday.
The moment: Activist Carmen Jones led the protesters, some of whom were armed, in ridiculing the uniformed girls for their “white privilege” as they walked to a competition at the Kentucky International Convention Center.
- A Facebook livestream of the protest shows most of the cheerleaders appeared to be white.
- “The reason why you get to be here in these pretty little gorgeous outfits and your gorgeous hair and your gorgeous bows is because of your white privilege,” Jones jeered at the girls.
- “Breonna is dead,” Jones said at one point, referencing Breonna Taylor, a black woman who was shot by Louisville police in March 2019. “Black mothers are burying their babies while white mothers send their daughters to cheer competitions.”
The reaction: “You could see it affected all these kids,” one father told local news station WDRB, saying his oldest daughter cried for an hour after the interaction.
- “If there’s a problem within life, you keep it between adults,” the man, who refused to give his surname, said. “You don’t take kids and add them into the problems. It had nothing to do with them. Even if you have something that you’re passionate about. That wasn’t the way to go about it.”
- The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh tweeted out criticism of the protesters, saying “Imagine thinking they’re the good guys somehow.”
- Despite outrage from critics of Black Lives Matter, Jones defended her actions, arguing that white children should be “mature enough to learn about their privilege,” in light of the oppression black children are expected to endure.
Where does America stand on Black Lives Matter? While Americans generally backed Black Lives Matter and other racial justice protests in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, public support has waned amid radical rhetoric and violence by some activists.
