By Victoria Mckeown-
Black Lives Matters Co-founder, Patrisse Khan Cullors has attempted to defend criticisms against revelations last month that she purchased four homes worth $3m.
Cullors in the last 24 hours fought back by saying that home ownership is a response to white supremacy.
Her response comes after a researcher late last week attacked what she considered hypocrisy in the BLM movement.
Ms Cullor’s post on social media is a weak attempt to avoid the real issue of accountability in relation to the $3m home purchases in an affluent part of Los Angeles.
Ms Cullors seems to be avoiding the real test of leadership that comes with being the founder of a large movement like the Black Lives Matters movement.
The Eye Of Media.Com has contacted Ms Cullors twice, urging her to properly explain how she managed to afford the $3m house she purchased, pointing out that her claims to have other earning power does not address the suspicions that she may have used funding from donations to the BLM movement for her own private gain.
The BLM movement was established to fight racism in the U.S, sand spread abroad to the UK. The movement has been successful in highlighting and campaigning against certain forms of racism, bOth in America and the UK.
It wasn’t set up for self indulgence which is unfortunately what many suspected may have happened with some of the funds contributed to the movement.
Since 2014, Ms Cullors has been paid $120,000, and could arguably have invested chunks of the money to achieve the $3m properties she has. An assumption connected to investments is all fine, but not without evidence.
Not when we know that over $90m of funds not properly accounted for has gone through the BLM movement of which she sits at the top.
Racial Disparities
In her post to Instagram, Khan-Cullors shared an NPR article that detailed the long history of racial disparities in American homeownership due to the government’s history of racist housing policies, such as redlining.
“Thank you @npr for highlighting the history of racism inside of the housing market and why Black homeownership has always been a way to disrupt white supremacy,” Khan-Cullors said in her post.
Buying Binge
In April, the New York Post reported that Khan-Cullors went on a “buying binge” and purchased several high-end homes, leading many critics to allege fraud against Ms Cullors, unless she provided evidence that she was making a profit from donations to Black Lives Matter.
Khan-Cullors rejected the claims, saying she has several other sources of income, including two book deals, public speaking, and teaching at a college.
“Oh look, the grifter who’s making millions off of claims that literally everything is racist, is claiming the housing market is racist,” one person commented. “And right after she bought a few houses for herself.”
Another added: “BLM Buy Large Mansions.”
Racism
Some shared NPR’s story and said they have had witnessed racism in the housing market.
“This is what structural racism looks like,” one person said.
There are no denials that racism should be confronted whenever its ugly head is clear to see, but raising issues of racism doesn’t settle down well, where there are important questions to answer about huge amounts of money to the tune of $3m.
Following the initial story on Khan-Cullors’ home purchases, Hawk Newsome, a BLM leader based in New York, called for an “independent investigation” into how the BLM organization spends its money.
“It’s really sad because it makes people doubt the validity of the movement and overlook the fact that it’s the people that carry this movement,” Newsome told the New York Post at the time”.