Black Lives Matter
The Latest
The links below are only a couple of the countless petitons you can sign in order to help stop racism in our world and uplift Black Lives Matter.
Justice for Breonna Taylor
Charge the cops who shot Jacob Blake
Justing for Daunte Wright
My Interest in Black Lives Matter
Growing up, I didn’t have to worry about much; my family was fortunate enough to share a home that we have been coming back to for over 10 years. Although my brothers and I lived in Carson, my mother was still able to put us in schools in Long Beach. At a very young age, I have been put in schools that were predominantly white. Being surrounded by people who, from the looks of it, were living comfortably, I never came home and asked about my culture. I was used to only being “the Black girl who had a lot of white friends”. However, I eventually developed some self-hatred because it felt like everyone was more conscious of the fact that I was Black than I was. I wanted to fit in so badly that there were days I would come home and wish I was white so that more people would notice me. It wasn’t until last summer, around the time of the murder of George Floyd, that I decided to dive deeper into what it meant to be Black. Since I was never taught about my culture, it felt as though I was starting from scratch. When the Black Lives Matter movement shifted into full effect, I knew it was time for me to not only accept the community I am apart of but to love my Black skin, wholeheartedly.
Currently, in America and around the world, Black people everywhere are facing prejudice and racism in their everyday lives. We all have to be on high alert and stay away from potentially dangerous situations just to avoid “being in the wrong place at the wrong time”. There are many personal issues that no other race has to endure and will never be able to understand so listening and learning to what Black people have to say about why they deserve to be treated equally can only benefit us all. I believe that everyone should take initiative to educate themselves on the history and current events of the Black community, whether an advocate or an ally, because there are so many things that have taken place that haven’t seen the light of the media and Black people who have changed lives that most don’t even know about. We can all learn to see, not only that Black lives do matter, but why they matter as well.
More Than A Movement
Black Lives Matter(BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement protesting against incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against Black people. BLM was founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of 17-year-old boy, Trayvon Martin. The movement as well as Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc., a global organization based in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada are fighting to completely eradicate white supremacy and build as much power as possible to intervene in violence on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.
Black Lives Matter is a movement that has had several beginnings. The most recent was in the response to the death of George Floyd; a Black man who was brutally murdered by white police officer, Dereck Chauvin. Floyd was only one name on the very long list of names that have been silenced by police brutality. This movement has been put in place in order for their names to be heard again.
Those Who Choose Violence
The same way the Black Lives Matter movement was put in place to stop the injustice, there have also been several hate groups that have been created in this process like the Proud Boys or the Ku Klux Klan. Both groups thrive off of spreading hate and racism to inform us of why the world would be a much better place if minorities did not exist and white people remained supreme. Due to the recent killings as well as the political happenings, both activists and hate groups have been making their voices heard countrywide and what everyone has been paying close attention to is if these two very different groups of people are being treated equally or not.
In the article, Proud Boys and Black Lives Matter Activists Clashed In A Florida Suburb. Only One Side Was Charged written by Columbia University graduate, Tim Craig of the Washington Post, he writes, “Amid fears that the confrontations could lead to clashes or shooting, police started enforcing the town’s rarely used noise ordinance, which essentially forbids disturbances louder than a close conversation between two people. But only the Black Lives Matter protesters were cited.” The discrimination and utter disrespect that Craig explains is the exact reason why Black Lives Matter even exists in the first place. Although both parties were protesting, only one side was cited; the side that just so happened to include minorities. Every action similar to this only justifies even more the hatred that is constantly growing in our country everyday.
We Aren’t Asking for Much
Ever since ancient times, people of African decent have been treated unfairly. Every gesture and act of cruelty has been used to create a political system that was built against Black people. From the very beginning, all we have ever wanted was basic human rights. The one thing that I did learn growing up was that life isn’t fair, especially for a Black person. My grandmother always said that this world was set up for Black people to work twice as hard only to get halfway and white supremacy is the root of it all.
In the New York Times, national correspondent, John Eligon writes an article titled Racial Double Standard of Capitol Police Outcry where he addresses the unfairness that was displayed in how police officers handled those who stormed the Capitol. He mentions, “Black Lives Matter activists across the country expressed outrage on Thursday at what they said was a tepid response from law enforcement officers to mostly white protestors, saying it stood in stark contrast to the aggressive tactics they have endured for years — officers in full riot gear who have used tear-gas, rubber bullets and batons. It also underscored the country’s uneven system of justice, many said, and lent credence to their insistence that Black people are devalued and viewed as inherently dangerous.” What Eligon mentions is the exact reason why the Black Lives Matter movement has to continue to grow. Many, whether in favor of BLM or not, are certainly aware of the fact that if it were Black protestors who decided to storm the Capitol, they would have been treated significantly more harshly than the mostly white conservatives.
We aren’t asking for much. All we want is to matter just as much as the white man. We shouldn’t have to live in fear for our lives in a world that we were born in. Racism is still very much real today as it was hundreds of years ago. However, the same way that racism will continue to spread, Black Lives Matter will continue to grow. We are working for a world where Black people are no longer systematically targeted for demise.
Overall, I believe everyone needs to be aware of BLM and the mistreatment toward Black people. This movement is doing nothing more than simply giving us an outlet to demand the respect, equality, and basic human rights that we deserve in our society and until that happens, we aren’t going to stop talking about it and we have no reason to.
Works Cited for Post One
Craig, Tim. “Proud Boys and Black Lives Matter Activists Clashed in a Florida Suburb. Only One Side Was Charged.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 5 Feb. 2021, www.washingtonpost.com/national/florida-protest-bill-unequal-treatment/2021/02/01/415d1b02-6240-11eb-9061-07abcc1f9229_story.html.
Eligon, John. “Racial Double Standard of Capitol Police Draws Outcry.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/us/capitol-trump-mob-black-lives-matter.html.
Civil Right to Black Lives Matter: Not Credible (Enough)
Summary
When it comes to deciding if an article or website can be trusted, at first, it may sound simple or easy. However, there are a number of things that need to be checked before determining if it’s credible. First and foremost, the author themself has to be questioned. The reliability of an author is important because if they are known for satirical content or their background doesn’t seem up to par with the article of a certain caliber, then the piece can be deemed as not credible. In the article, I chose titled, From Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter, the author, Aldon Morris, is Leon Forest Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University, and president of the American Sociological Association. His landmark books include The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (1986) and The Scholar Denied: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology(2015). For writing a piece on the history of the Black community, Morris’s background suits that agenda perfectly.
Morris’s post opens by mentioning the death of 17-year-old boy, Trayvon Martin, considering his passing was the official beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement. He goes on to list and elaborate on a number of different important events in Black history like the creation of Jim Crow laws, Rosa Parks’ decision to sit where she pleased, etc. He brings up the past in order to predict what will happen in our futures. Toward the end of the article, Morris wrote, “Wherever injustice exists, struggles will arise to abolish it”. With this, he wants his readers to understand the same way that the immorality that our world carries is never-ending and we have to use that as motivation to keep fighting for what is right. The big question is whether or not the Black Lives Matter movement will change societal standards for the better and make equality look at least remotely possible in our world.
Although Morris is a trustworthy writer, there are still some qualities of credibility that he lacks such as embedding sources from other websites or authors and including other links to justify that the historical events he speaks of are interpreted correctly. Due to this, I believe that Aldon Morris has the potential of being credible, however, it can be deemed as even more credible if more sources were added.
What’s Going Right
In the piece, the sources may be lacking, however, Morris does hit some of the other points that justify something as credible. The amount of objectivity and purpose that Morris included is phenomenal. Not only do his words have a driven tone, but he also embeds the words of others that he’s heard from his surroundings such as sociologists, activists, and others who feel just as strongly as he does and has made careers out of their interests. By reading this post, you can easily see that he is passionate about the topic at hand.
Aldon Morris’s accuracy in his writing is also an advantage that he has. When he mentions the historical events listed, he includes dates from when they occurred and who was involved in those events. This shows efficiency in the article because it keeps the reader from second-guessing if what they’re reading is true or not. The most important factor of any credible piece of writing is completely convincing the reader that what they are reading is good enough to keep reading; that includes eliminating any doubt of the truth.
Scientific American
Scientific American is an American science magazine that was created by Rufus M. Porter on August 28, 1845, almost 200 years ago, making it the oldest magazine that is still being continuously updated and published. Even world-renowned scientist Albert Einstein has trusted it enough to make contributions to the magazine. Considering the fact that Scientific American is first and foremost a science information database, most of the sources included today are organizations that encompass people with PhDs in medicine, psychology, and sociology.
Conclusion
Overall, Aldon Morris’s work has impeccable structure, however, with more sources, the article could have been all the more credible. I believe that Morris should add links to other websites and direct quotes from other authors in order for his work to flourish. To create an article in all of its credibility while still getting all of your points and opinions across to the readers, I believe that it must include rich and vital details on the topic at hand, technical and sophisticated diction and language, a certain type of sequencing or process that creates a flow throughout the article, different qualifications of the sources in the piece, a number of examples to get the reader to visualize what is being portrayed, and anecdotes to keep said reader interested in the information. Although Morris’s article is very opinion-based, considering he is deciding to include facts from real events in the past, it would be beneficial for himself and the reader if he were to post other outlets.
Works Cited for Post 2
Morris, Aldon. “From Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter.” Scientific American, Scientific American, 3 Feb. 2021, www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-civil-rights-to-black-lives-matter1/.
“Aldon Morris.” American Sociological Association, 24 Nov. 2020, www.asanet.org/about/governance-and-leadership/council/presidents/aldon-morris.
“Scientific American.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 14 Mar. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_American.
“Scientific American.” Scientific American | Springer Nature | For Librarians | Springer Nature, www.springernature.com/gp/librarians/products/journals/scientific-american.
Annotated Bibliography — Why Should Black Lives Matter
Why should Black lives matter? When you analyze this title, the potential answer seems quite obvious. Black Lives should matter because they are human; Black people are people too so why wouldn’t they matter just as much as everyone else? Unfortunately, the deeper you look into societal history and current events, the more you will come to realize that, in our world, Black lives don’t matter and they never have. In July of 2013, several months after Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenage black boy was brutally killed by George Zimmerman. Several Black activists and allies decided to bend together and fight against the injustice, thus, Black Lives Matter was born.
Podcast — About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge
Eddo-Lodge, Reni. About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge, spotify:show:6RNwASBcNjuK4tuqdaXzBn.
London journalist and author of Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race, Reni Eddo-Lodge, has written for several publications including The New York Times, The Daily Telegraph, Buzzfeed, and others. In order to create About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge, which was named one of the best podcasts of 2018 by British GQ and Wired, Lodge teamed up with a producer, two researchers, a composer and an artist to help her. In her podcast, Eddo-Lodge splits her information into nine chapters and speaks to a different guest with a different thesis in each one. She speaks to political activist, Billy Bragg and Shadow Home secretary, Diana Abbott, to discuss problematic topics specific to the United Kingdom like the airing of BBC’s White Season and the incident at Kent Union that caused uproar when nonblack celebrities were put on an advertisement specifically for Black people. Eddo-Lodge also speaks on more general topics like activism and multiculturalism or the fact that just because Black people have slowly progressed over the years as far as human rights, the equality that we all want still doesn’t exist because white people are being given so much more.
Eddo-Lodge uses a direct and pragmatic tone to reach her mostly Black and female audience as well as the nonblack allies who want to learn more. In chapter nine, titled The Big Question, Lodge inputs a quote from the Queensland Aboriginal activist group that states, “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” Eddo-Lodge is only trying to project the message that Black people want nothing more than to be heard and all it takes is for white people to be quiet and listen.
Article — Racial Double Standard of Capitol Police Draws Outcry
Eligon, John. “Racial Double Standard of Capitol Police Draws Outcry.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 Jan. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/us/capitol-trump-mob-black-lives-matter.html.
John Elligon, national correspondent for the New York Times in Kansas City, whote his article titled, Racial Double Standard of Capitol Police Draws Outcry, on the irony that was presented after the the Capitol was stormed on January 6, 2021. Elligon supports his claim by including a video link, and additional information about the rally that happened prior to the invasion where President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Elligon’s purpose is to inform the readers about how unjust our world really is by using hypothetical statements that suggest that if a rally of Black people were to storm the capitol, there would most likely be several fatal casualties and a much larger uproar in our political society. He adapts a very sophisticated yet sarcastic tone for his audience in order to reach not only people of color but white allies who are willing to listen.
The article provides in-depth information about what went down on January 6th while using an opinion based filter that allows Elligon to get his point across. He includes not only sources that support his claim but also a number of counterarguments that he then shuts down with political data analysis.
Article — What Would Efforts to Defund or Disband Police Departments Really Mean?
Searcey, Dionne. “What Would Efforts to Defund or Disband Police Departments Really Mean?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 8 June 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/us/what-does-defund-police-mean.html.
Dionne Searcey, politics reporter for The New York Times, who graduated from University of Nebraska with a degree in journalism has worked for several publications including The Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune. In her journaling days, Searcey has won a Pulitzer Prize, the Michael Kelly Award, the Gerald Loeb Award for Breaking News, and has even been nominated for an Emmy. She writes What Would Effort to Defund or Disband Police Departments with an emphasis on Minneapolis considering the fact that “a veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council pledged on Sunday to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department”, Searcey states, “promising to create a new system of public safety in a city where law enforcement has long been accused of racism”. In the article, Searcey brings up various topics including the ample definition of ‘police defundment’ and the logistics that would and should go into abolishing the police.
Dionne Searcey uses a somewhat virtuous and sincere tone in her article to reach an audience of other cities in the upper midwest region that are looking to follow in Minneanapolis’s footsteps by emphasizing that it isn’t too late or too difficult to do what is right. She mentions, “One group described an idea for policing in which people attending events look out for one another but emergency workers are standing by in the background, handing out water and ready to step in if needed.” With this idea and others like it, it’s easier to see that compromise and justice for all can be possible.
Article — Police Killings Decreased In Cities That Saw Black Lives Matter Protests, Study Finds
Mosley, Tonya, and Allison Hagan. “Police Killings Decreased In Cities That Saw Black Lives Matter Protests, Study Finds.” Police Killings Decreased In Cities That Saw Black Lives Matter Protests, Study Finds | Here & Now, WBUR, 12 Mar. 2021, www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/03/12/police-killings-decrease-study.
Stanford University graduate, Tonya Mosley, co-host of NPR’s podcast, Here and Now, has also been the Silicon Valley bureau chief of KQED in San Francisco and has been awarded an Edward R. Murrow award for her radio series, Black in Seattle and an Emmy Award for her televised creation, Beyond Ferguson in 2016. Mosley opens the podcast episode by introducing Travis Campbell, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst who conducted the study that showed the discretion in police killings in cities where Black Lives Matter rallies and protests happen in comparison to cities where they don’t occur. This study was published in the Social Science Research Network to show the date from 2014–2019. Campbell mentions that in cities where protests were taking place, the police brutality rates dropped 15–20% more than in the cities that don’t normally have rallies.
In the podcast conducted by Tonya Mosley, there is a very impartial and frank tone directed at an audience of democratic background. During the podcast Campbell mentions the “Ferguson Effect” which he described as, “Protests [that] increased public scrutiny of the police and police respond by having lower morale or effort…Because the police are arresting less people, reducing the number of interactions between the police and civilians reduces the lethal use of force.” The data that Campbell brings up shows that although it may not look like any change is happening, we are in fact progressing, slowly but surely.
Article — Political Divisions Drive Police Brutality Lawsuit Settlements
Benincasa, Robert. “Political Divisions Drive Police Brutality Lawsuit Settlements.” NPR, NPR, 9 Sept. 2020, www.npr.org/2020/09/09/910676192/political-divisions-drive-police-brutality-cases.
Reporter for NPR Investigations, Robert Benincasa, analyzes data for NPR.org. Before joining the team at NPR in 2008, Benincasa worked as the database editor for Garnett News Service Washington Bureau for 10 years. In 2011–2016, Benincasa earned the privilege of winning the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award as well as the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. Benincasa has also been a part of the faculty at Georgetown University’s Master of Professional Studies program in journalism, specifically, for 8 years. Robert Benincasa puts his data analysis skills to use by writing Political Divisions Drive Police Brutality Lawsuit Settlements. He uses yearly percentages and amounts of money to depict the differences between red states and blue states as far as police brutality juxtaposed with the number of settlements. Benincasa includes a variety of different lawyers such as Clark Neily, former trial lawyer and vice president for criminal justice at Cato Institute, New York civil rights attorney, William O. Wagstaff III, Dave O’ Brien of Iowa who exclusively represents civil right plaintiffs, and James DeSimone, verteran civil right lawyer. All of which give their two senses on what the data actually means to them.
Benincasa uses a formal and dignified tone to reach lawyers and other forms of higher end occupation lists that have an impact on people’s lives as their audience; as well as those who are hesitant about filing lawsuits against the unjust police officers that have acted wrongfully. Benincasa states, “Mayner, who works as a Realtor in Austin, says her son suffered from schizophrenia and physically attacked the officer after being tased…She fights back tears as she recounts that months later, the Highway Patrol officer who shot Garrett during a struggle was awarded a Purple Heart by the Texas Department of Public Safety in connection with the shooting…So far, Mayner has not filed a lawsuit in the shooting.” He includes this information to show that people everywhere are hesitant to file against police officers because they are worried that the trial will not end in their favor and he is trying to get those apart of red states to understand that with the right lawyers, their trial can end justly and fairly despite their state’s political views.
Magazine Article — America’s Long Overdue Awakening on Systemic Racism
Worland, Justin. “America’s Long Overdue Awakening on Systemic Racism.” Time, Time, 11 June 2020, time.com/5851855/systemic-racism-america/.
Senior correspondent for Time Magazine, Justin Worland, is a Harvard University graduate with a Bachelors in Arts. Prior to his service for Time, he was a Summer Politics writer for CQ Roll Call Group, an Associate Managing Editor for Harvard Crimson, and worked as a writer and reporter before making his way up to senior correspondent. He also writes for other magazines including One.Five Newsletter and The Brief Newsletter. In America’s Long Overdue Awakening on Systemic Racism, Worland informs his readers on the injustice happening in America everyday. In an effort to create a visual as to how much worse minorities in America are now, Worland writes, “…the notion of “systemic racism,” once confined to academic and activist circles on the left of the spectrum, has become the phrase du jour, with Google searches for the term rising a hundredfold in a matter of months..”. We as a nation are failing to understand the meaning of equality and selflessness. Those who can be better do so while stepping on others in the process.
Worland uses an enthusiastic yet concerned tone to reach his audience of most people of color. Worland being an African-American uses that to attract his readers and sympathizes with them.
Deepening My Analysis — Intersectionality Matters
If you have ever heard stories of people, specifically women or people of color, being discriminated against simply because of their identifications and the discriminators having zero consequences simply because the remarks they make are “normal”, those stories are examples of intersectionality. Intersectionality is the natural connection of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender and how they apply to a specific group, regarded as creating interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage. For a deeper understanding of what this topic means for the Black Lives Matter movement, Columbia Law School graduate and writer and theorist on all things civil rights race, and feminism, Kimberle Crenshaw, explains its prevalence in our world under different lights in her podcast, Intersectionality Matters, which was published in November of 2018 and is still being updated today. Episode 22, in particular, titled, COVID, White Power, and the Unseeing of Race Again is a more recent spiel hones in on the specifics of how racism has become even more ubiquitous since the coronavirus outbreak. Crenshaw introduces four guest speakers who give their input on how our society and our world have changed and the significance of that change. Camara Phyllis Jones, Jonathan Metzl, Barbara Arnwine, and Keeanga-Yahmahtta Taylor all chime in at different points in the podcast to give their two sense on things like healthcare, racial disadvantages and comparisons, and police brutality to inform listeners on how these topics contribute to intersectionality as a whole.
Kimberle Crenshaw’s podcast has changed my way of thinking in regards to the Black Lives Matter movement in terms of its importance. Before listening, I assumed that the outcome of the movement was to only help Black people get our voices to be heard and finally receive all of the rights that we deserve. Although that is still very much the case, after listening to the podcast, I realized that the movement and the uplifting of African Americans will help our world as a whole. There’s so much injustice and so many unfair disadvantages that take place every day and it’s keeping us from thriving together. More people would be healthier, cities would be cleaner, and countrywide feuds would cease to exist if there was a profound amount of respect for everyone instead of those with more power relying on means of extortion and exploitation just to turn around and ask for more knowing some groups of people can’t provide because several systems were built against them from the very beginning.
Stanford University graduate, epidemiologist, and anti-racism activist, Camara Phyllis Jones, explains how Black people and white people were compared when the pandemic began and those comparisons made the overall racism and prejudice against African Americans more clear and, dare I say, obvious. In response to Crenshaw’s comment on coronavirus and George Floyd’s death being seen as “twin pandemics”, Jones insists that where our country has gone wrong is we have forgotten that the importance isn’t in the race, it’s in the racism and she goes on to state, “Since minorities were hit first and hit the hardest, white people assumed their “firewall” was so strong that the virus wouldn’t reach them.” She hints at the fact that white people have so much internalized racism to the point where they assumed they were safe from wearing masks because the virus only bread itself in low-income communities. Jonathan Metzel, an American psychiatrist who graduated from Vanderbilt University, talks about how racism became more prevalent in healthcare, in particular, when the Covid-19 pandemic began. He says, “Racism and antiracism are both structural,” and when it comes to healthcare, the necessities within it shouldn’t be racialized at all. He mentions that although the healthcare system has been against people of color for so long, the pandemic is what exposed its true colors because several people were in need of assistance. Barbara Arnwine, a graduate of Duke University School of Law, who has served several years as the executive director for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Keeanga-Tamahtta Taylor, civil rights activist and assistant professor in African-American Studies at Princeton University bounce ideas between each other as they bring up the importance of the disadvantaged that Black people face and how they correlate with police brutality. Taylor claims that the “good” reputation and high praise that the police department has been given, not only before but after the death of George Floyd should not exist and need to be rethought simply because of the fact that “police officers do not do the job they were meant to do”. She passes the ball to Arnwine who speaks about how the pitfalls that the Black community run into so often aren’t even caused by them. She argues, “When times get difficult for whites, their resentment toward Black people grows.” This way of thinking and living that white people possess creates a certain type of cynicism that automatically puts African Americans in a light that they didn’t ask for solely because that light could always potentially lead to darkness and fatality.
Overall, these ideas form the questions, “What has become of the supposed reckoning with white supremacy since George Floyd’s death? Are we at the bottom of a Sisyphusian hill again in insisting that race is as newsworthy in the disproportionate deaths of African Americans to COVID as it has been in the weeks of protest over police violence? And why has it been so difficult to connect the two?” Crenshaw shows her listeners that intersectionality is everywhere at all times. There is a light shed on the irony that our country chooses to participate in so often. If white people are so against African Americans and what we stand for, why do they try so hard to make sure that we are relevant? We are put on a pedestal in the white communities in order to make sure that we are never out of their sight. Due to this, they are working extra hard to make sure that even in the time of a pandemic where everyone is struggling, African Americans are aware of who is making them struggle. At a different point in the podcast, Arnwine states, “Winning one battle isn’t the solution. It’s going to take some real dismantling and destructuring and dismantling,” and now I know that the Black Lives Matter movement can help with that as well as proving to white people and the definition of racism as a whole that George Floyd did not suffer for nothing.
Sustained Argument & Research — Let’s Work Together to End Police Brutality
As a child, I was always aware of the fact that my home life was different from my friends. My parents divorced when I was very young and since I clung to their marriage as a source of happiness, I was so devastated when I became old enough to understand. It didn’t help that when my parents split my mother moved us in with my grandmother leaving my dad to fend for himself. It took only a year after for my father to be homeless, unemployed, and practically left with nothing. On March 28, 2015, my mother was dropping me off to hang out with my dad. He lived in his car at the time that he usually parked in front of his sister’s house. Despite my father’s living conditions, I was always so excited for us to get together since I rarely ever saw him anymore. We decided to go to Mcdonald’s and while we were eating, we noticed three police cars pull up in the parking lot but since we were in Los Angeles, things like this happened all the time. My father went back inside to get us refills and as he was coming out, five police officers tackled my father all at once. As a 12-year-old girl, it took my mind a second to process what was happening but as soon as I did, I started to scream for help. All I could hear was my dad pleading for his life and saying over and over again, “Please, I have a daughter. She’s in the car.” One of the police officers would hear my dad’s words and say in response, “There’s no one in that car. You’re just trying to resist.” The next thing I knew my father, bruised and bloody, was being taken in handcuffs and put in the police car. We found out that my father had been taken into custody because he was being accused of a crime that he did not commit. If a further investigation wasn’t insisted on, my dad could have been put in jail in another man’s place for several years. Personally, ever since that day, I haven’t trusted a single cop and the respect one would have for the police doesn’t resonate with me and I don’t think it ever will. The blatant police brutality that occurred that day is why I feel so strongly about the topic today. I believe that there are so many other solutions that are attainable in any situation involving police officers, regardless of if they’ve caught the wrong guy or not. In America, the police department is held in such high regard when they rarely ever treat their title with respect. So many fatalities and tragedies, specifically toward African Americans, in association with the police, have happened simply because they are doing everything but protecting and serving.
The systemic racism that has been brewing in our country for centuries can easily be resolved when everyone is shown the same respect that we as citizens are expected to give toward the black and blue uniforms that are taking those same citizens’ lives every day. However, as people of this country, I believe that everyone can contribute to ending police brutality by changing the police culture, educating themselves on systemic racism and what solutions have been successful in the past, and simply going and joining the movement to fight for what’s right.
Blue Lives Matter is Problematic
Although police brutality may seem like an obvious problem, there are still two different sides to every issue. In this case, those in favor of the police are categorized as ‘blue lives matter’ and those against are ‘black lives matter’. Blue lives matter is a counterargument that was created to go against black lives matter and the movement behind it. Those apart of the slogan believe that the same way that Black people are in fear for their lives when dealing with police officers, cops also have their lives to fear for when dealing with the citizens. In a New York Times article, written by Metro desk reporters Juliana Kim and Michael Wilson, titled, Blue Lives Matter and Defund the Police Clash in the Streets, they include the words of Bay Ridge activist, Noah Weston who says, “Blue is their uniform and they can take it off…but Black people can’t stop being Black at their leisure.” The reason blue lives matter is so problematic is that a “blue life” simply does not exist. Weston points out that Black people are being discriminated against because of their skin color whereas police officers are being discriminated against because of their occupation. They chose this job, therefore it doesn’t make it right for them to think they can take someone’s life. In addition, since ‘blue lives matter’ is often always used in response to black lives matter, it makes the entire phrase blasphemous. In a different article titled, Can We Talk to Our ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Neighbors About Black Lives Matter?, written by Philip Galanes, he mentions, “The pity of blue lives matter as I’ve seen the slogan deployed, is that it springs from a zealous denial that black lives matter. Even the parroting name makes it seem like a childish, schoolyard taunt…” In saying this he means that in response to “black lives matter”, people have been using blue lives matter in order to disregard the fact that black lives actually do exist and matter, making the entire slogan silly in comparison. Due to the reputation that police officers have made for themselves by acting recklessly with the Black community, blue lives matte will never be held at as high a standard as black lives matter simply because if a cop feels that their life is in danger, they can easily resign at any time and take off the uniform.
Black Lives Matter Puts Police Brutality in the Spotlight
Unlike ‘blue lives matter’ who have made an unfortunate reputation for themselves, Black Lives Matter is thriving off of the movement that is building and evolving every single day in order to fight for the justice that so many apart of the Black community deserve to have. Every day, the movement is growing in numbers and the more people who bring attention to Black Lives Matter, the more people who are seeing the aspects of what police brutality really is. In an episode of NPR’s podcast, Code Switch, titled, Why Now, White People, they interview various people of the white community and ask for their evaluations on why Black Lives Matter is becoming so trendy. One which replied with, “…in the past, it was conspicuous to be speaking out about BLM as a white person…not it feels conspicuous to not be sharing a post, linking places to donate, etc…” Considering the fact that police brutality can occur anywhere at any time, spreading awareness is the most effective way for all citizens to participate in. Getting the word out as much as possible is the most beneficial way for stopping the madness. Bureau chief, Mike Baker, and reporters, Kim Barker and Ali Watkins, of the New York Times, work together to write In City After City, Police Mishandled Black Lives Matter Protests, where they include various different police brutality incidents in different cities countrywide; They write, “Most Portland police officers had not received any recent skills training in crowd management, de-escalation, procedural justice, crisis prevention, or other critical skills for preventing or minimizing the use of force…” Police departments are refusing to treat the citizens with respect and their job with importance. The longer that this continues to happen the more casualties occur which is why we have to be the ones to stop them with every resource at our disposal. In a different podcast from the National Association of Social Workers(NASW), episode 57 titled, Black Lives Matter: The Role of Social Work in Dismantling Structural Racism in the USA, mentions, “…There’s a need for an understanding from all cultures about the implication of racism. The fact that if there’s racism against African American communities, it’s not isolated to the African American community; it affects everybody.” There is a certain stigma that has been growing on all aspects of the movement that is forcing everyone to be involved one way or another. The racism that African Americans experience every single day is an issue that is so grand that it is impossible to not know about it. There shouldn’t be any silence on the issue because everyone, at this point in time, is expected to help in any way they know how and if you choose not to, then you are a part of the problem and that is what our world has come to in result of police brutality everywhere.
How America’s History Affects The Black Community Today
Every issue, big or small, always has a starting point; a certain space in time where several people chose to live the same life or do the same thing and kept passing those actions to other people. Systemic racism works in the way. Systemic racism is the discrimination against a certain group of people because of their ethnicity that has become so widely known and familiarized that the discrimination extends to become a part of various sets of principles. In a TIME magazine article titled, America’s Long Overdue Awakening to Systemic Racism, senior correspondent to TIME, Justin Worland, wrote, “The origins of America’s unjust racial order lie in the most brutal institution of enslavement that human beings have ever concocted.” Worland explains with this that the stain of racism again Black people is so difficult to deal with because it was created several hundred years ago giving systemic racism a copious amount of time to evolve and filter out through different parts of our country’s agendas. This isn’t a new issue. Black Lives Matter is a movement that is responding not only to what is going on now but what also has happened in the past. History is only repeating itself time and time again as another person of color is being disrespected and stripped of their basic human rights.
The Relevance of James Baldwin and His Voice
In a documentary on famous American novelist, James Baldwin, titled, I Am Not Your Negro, Baldwin sits down with psychologist Kenneth Clark and talks about all things African American. In this mid-1970s interview, Baldwin gives insight into what it was like to be a Black man in America during that time. He claims, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it has been faced. History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history, If we pretend otherwise, we literally are criminals.” James Baldwin is greatly respected even in today’s day in age because of the words that he spoke in his time. His beliefs are just as relevant now as they were then all because of the systemic racism that has traveled so far down the societal line. The Black community will always be affected by systemic racism despite which time period and place that you come from. In America, being Black comes with both fear and acceptance that being discriminated against isn’t a choice, it’s a requirement.
What Should You Do
In conclusion, police brutality has made a whole new name for what it means to be an officer and what it means to be Black. The blatant racism and bigotry have lingered for far too long and the Black Live Matter movement is working to be the change that America needs. Unfortunately, my father was only one of the hundreds of people who have been harassed by the police and treated unfairly because of the color of their skin. The disrespect has to end and as citizens of this nation, we have to be the ones to end it. Author and professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, Alex S. Vitale, wrote in his book, The End of Policing, “We should be working to improve the conditions where people come from and allowing them access to the opportunities we have. We cannot and should not rely on ever more intensive, violent, and oppressive…policing to manage problems that we ourselves. helped create.” As citizens, it is essential that we use our resources in order to make a difference. Social media is the first of many ways that we can spread awareness about what’s going on. Considering the fact that there are people put in power to make the decisions of our country all we can do is reach out to them and hope that they treat the words of the people with care and urgency. Also, choosing to educate ourselves on current events as well as our country’s history and familiarizing our ways of living with the perspective that people of color have to live through unironically is the closest that anyone can get to understanding. Police brutality is the act of police officers abusing their power and assuming that every notion that they make is the right one even when they are purposefully endangering or harming the lives of other people. This epidemic has gone on for too long and it’s up to us to fight against it because Black lives matter and always have.
Works Cited for Post 5
Kim, Juliana, and Michael Wilson. “‘Blue Lives Matter’ and ‘Defund the Police’ Clash in the Streets.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 22 July 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/nyregion/ny-back-the-blue-lives-matter-rallies.html.
Galanes, Philip. “Can We Talk to Our ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Neighbors About Black Lives Matter?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 3 Sept. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/style/black-lives-matter-lawn-sign-police.html.
Demby, Gene. “Why Now, White People?” NPR, NPR, 17 June 2020, www.npr.org/2020/06/16/878963732/why-now-white-people.
Barker, Kim, et al. “In City After City, Police Mishandled Black Lives Matter Protests.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 20 Mar. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/03/20/us/protests-policing-george-floyd.html.
“National Association of Social Workers (NASW).” NASW — National Association of Social Workers, www.socialworkers.org/News/Social-Work-Talks-Podcast/EP57-Black-Lives-Matter-The-Role-of-Social-Work-in-Dismantling-Structural-Racism-in-the-USA.
Worland, Justin. “America’s Long Overdue Awakening on Systemic Racism.” Time, Time, 11 June 2020, time.com/5851855/systemic-racism-america/.
Baldwin, James, et al. “I Am Not Your Negro.” Amazon, 10–18, 2018, www.amazon.com/I-Am-Not-Your-Negro/dp/B01MR52U7T.
VITALE, ALEX. “END OF POLICING.” Amazon, VERSO, 2021, www.amazon.com/End-Policing-Alex-S-Vitale/dp/1784782890/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=.
Genre Transformation — A Poem About Police Brutality
The Never Ending Race-ism
I grew up hearing my family say, “Black people will always have to work twice as hard just to get halfway.”
But how am I supposed to get anywhere when you cut us in half at the starting line
When you erase the starting line completely and force us to get in line lining up your 9 millimeters between our eyes
What happened to just declining my resume
Instead of shooting, asking questions and maybe hearing what I get to say
Now you’re all in line in front of us forming a barricade
In bulletproof material even though you’ll be the ones taking our lives away anyway
But we keep marching and protesting and fighting and walking to end this foul play
Save our people from under the highway
Make sure that we all get to see another day
So that I can at least get my grade back from that essay
And graduate
So that the black community can reclaim who we were 400 years ago on that first field day
For you, this is just another Thursday
But for us, we’ll be lucky to see our children celebrate their next birthday
Full of chatter and laughter
But rather the script is flipped and lifelong dreams are shattered
Our ashes scattered
But it shouldn’t be this way
I should be able to start the race with everybody else
I should be able to finish every single chapter of this life without being afraid of you
Because I matter
And he did too and she did too
Why are we being beaten to black and blue by the black and blue
Beaten until we’re numb
Beaten until we can’t walk straight
Then you put us in chains if we’re lucky
See but the thing is some of us aren’t so lucky
Telling us to put our hands up as if it’s some sort of sick tribute to your privilege
Telling us to get down so you can pull the trigger then you figure
The safety on the gun is only there for decoration
The safety of the gun is only something to ignore
So the “safety of your people” was nothing but a metaphor
And then when our children cry
The only thing we can do is look them in the eyes and tell them
To be careful