The “ugly truth” to which Rashad Turner refers is that Black Lives Matter doesn’t actually care that much for improving black lives. Turner founded the St. Paul, Minnesota chapter of BLM and for a while acted as its main spokesperson. Back in 2015, for instance, Turner tried to spin the group’s threat to shut down the city’s marathon to further the cause of, er, racial justice. Turner refused to take questions from the Star Tribune, but instead released a quote from Martin Luther King about one of the greatest threats to black Americans as being whites who are “more devoted to order than justice.”

Since then, however, the scales have fallen from Turner’s eyes about BLM’s performative rather than substantive nature. The final straw, he explained last week in this video, was BLM’s attacks on charter schools — which for inner city children offer the only hope for education and a better life. Turner isn’t turning into a crypto-conservative by any means, but it appears he’s not too concerned about order-over-justice issues these days (via Townhall):

“I believed the organization stood for exactly what the name implies—black lives do matter,” explained Rashad Turner in the video announcing his decision to step away from BLM after helping create the chapter in St. Paul, Minnesota.

“However, after a year on the inside, I learned they had little concern for rebuilding Black families. And they cared even less about improving the quality of education for students in Minneapolis. That was made clear when they publicly denounced charter schools alongside the teacher’s union.”

“I was an insider in Black Lives Matter and I learned the ugly truth. The moratorium on charter schools does not support rebuilding the black family, but it does create barriers to a better education for black children. I resigned from Black Lives Matter after a year and a half, but I didn’t quit working to improve black lives and access to a great education” says the now-president and executive director of Minnesota Parent Union, an organization created to help parents send their children to better schools.

The focus on family structures seems puzzling, although it’s not Turner’s main point. BLM has been very open about its hostility to traditional family structures, which is entirely in keeping with its hard-Socialist agenda. BLM put this down the memory hole last year after their sudden popularity after the death of George Floyd, but its agenda made their aim clear in this regard:

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.

Turner does emphasize his own family’s role in shaping his character, especially when it comes to education. He also cites the “disrupt the family” agenda item as one of the reasons he exited BLM, and emphasizes the need to push education alternatives as the key to uplifting black children — and although Turner doesn’t mention it, all children stuck in failing public-school systems.

Turner mentions the forces “opposed” to this strategy. Presumably, he’s also not talking about order-over-justice white people, but the teachers unions that have actively opposed school choice. This is precisely the opening that the GOP has in beginning to make inroads in urban and first-ring suburban districts. Turner seems an unlikely convert to the Republican Party, but there are plenty of parents and grandparents who have had enough with performative protest at the expense of the children.