The Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization manifesto, which includes a highly controversial aim to “disrupt” the black nuclear family, has suddenly disappeared from its website.

Is the BLM organization backing away from this dangerous ideal or was deleting the webpage an attempt to deflect negative attention now that so many people are paying attention to their real goals?

We hope the former, but likely it’s the latter.

The story

If you go to blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe, you will likely get an error message that the page does not exist or was not found.

This is a recent occurrence, as I visited the website within the past two weeks (and many times prior) to learn about what the BLM org, which many rightly separate from the broader black lives matter social movement, aims to accomplish.

Previously, on their website they had a manifesto that included:

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

Now, that entire manifesto is gone–seemingly deleted. 

The BLM organization provides a background section that includes its history and statements of belief. Now missing is its controversial aims.

Less than one month ago, Politifact fact-checked the criticism that the organization wants to “abolish” the traditional family and linked to the very webpage under dispute.

This is too coincidental to be an oversight or website malfunction.

Why this matters

For months, I have joined many others in questioning this organization because it aims to “disrupt” the nuclear black family.

BLM defenders like Politifact argue that the organization simply wants to change how the family is defined to be broader than just a mother, father, and children but to encompass grandparents and other relatives. In short, they are borrowing Hillary Clinton’s famous book title “It Takes a Village.” 

In public policy, they want to end what they view as preferential treatment to middle-class family structures that depend on two parents. So for example, they might want to end tax breaks for married couples or zoning laws that prioritize single-family housing.

I would take their words at face value and argue that in spirit and policy they want to disrupt, displace, or move away from the two-parent family. Yet, married couples are critical to what is called the success sequence. 

According to the success sequence, individuals who get at least a high school diploma, work, and then marry before having any children, in that order, are not likely to be poor in adulthood. This is based on data about poverty and family structures.

Childbearing within marriage is key, but when we look at the number of black babies born in the U.S., an astonishing 72 percent (nearly three out of four) are born to unwed parents. (This includes those where both parents are in the household.) That is above half of the Hispanic babies and only a third of white babies.

At the same time, poverty rates are highest among blacks. Despite falling to their lowest levels in 2019, the poverty rate for blacks is over 18 percent.

The way forward

Reorienting our culture and policies may seem like the easiest solution, but if we want blacks to move up the economic ladder, we should educate them on this formula for success. 

As a society, we can provide common-sense policies that are responsive to the situations of single parents. But for those young (black) people who have not yet had kids, why not show them how the success series can work for them rather than waiting until after their decisions have been made.

That’s not what BLM intends. Scrubbing a webpage will not hide its goal to undermine the nuclear family and the success series.