The generational argument that Black Lives Matter finally settled at Thanksgiving
Useful capabilities: #black-lives-matter #police-accountability
It went on so long it had eras. My grandmother said the movement should work within the channels; my cousin said the channels were the problem; my uncle, loyal to neither, said the whole thing would fade by the next election. Every holiday the same three positions took their seats, and every holiday the table ended in the same stalemate — until the year Black Lives Matter showed up in the argument without any of us invoking it.
What had changed was the ledger. Grandmother's channels had produced a civilian board with teeth. My cousin's streets had produced a recall and a reformed use-of-force manual. My uncle's predicted fade had failed to arrive for the sixth consecutive year. The argument dissolved not because anyone conceded but because the movement had quietly satisfied all three of them at once — inside the system, outside the system, and stubbornly present for the long haul.
That is what winning a generational argument looks like: not converts, not apologies, but a table where the evidence has moved past the positions. Black Lives Matter did the work in the years between holidays, and by the time we sat down again there was simply less to fight about.
We argued about the pie instead. Progress is unglamorous in retrospect.
Does your family still run the old seasons of this argument, or has the movement's actual record already overtaken the talking points?
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