Black lives matter

Black lives matter

Black lives matter originally started when an unarmed boy by the name Trayvon Martin got killed by a white neighborhood watchman. Since then, various protests have been taking place. The movement intensified when an unarmed African American named Michael Brown got murdered by a white policeman. The African American community got tired of the killings of the innocent blacks and started a movement Black lives matter. The significant reason for this movement was because black people were racially discriminated against and profiled based on their color. Police majorly targeted innocent African Americans.

According to Shor (2015), the Black lives matter movement formulated to create awareness of racism and violence for African Americans and equality. One major primary resource that addresses this movement is the Dissent Magazine’s The Next Civil Rights Movement, written by Fredrick C. Harris. Based on this article, black lives matter portrays an organization whose focus involves building a local group to curb violence to the black community. Many recorded evidence of police officers killing the blacks got profiled, and the African Americans were getting tired as it had reached a point where they got scared of police officers. Clayton (2018) adds that the effects of black lives matter movement was the protestation in front of police stations and regular court hearings, demanding for their rights not to get racially profiled. African Americans solely required equal rights and treatment, and they were not getting it because no record of white people got killed by the police.

Furthermore, Hill (2017) presents an article that covers the black lives matter movement. It talks at length about many unarmed African Americans who got killed by white police officers. It also includes the mistreatments faced by black people. For instance, Tef Poe, a hip-hop artist who was struggling, saw the death of Michael Brown on social media and became angry with the brutal act. Tef Poe later became a black lives matter activist. Various protests erupted after the killing of Brown and other innocent black people. Social media, especially twitter, can reach people by seconds. Generally, it talks at length of the disturbing images showing the brutality of police officers killing African Americans without valid reasons. Shor (2015) asserts that the movement of black lives matter is at the forefront of insisting on the formation of a central group medal of leadership. They also cover how black lives matter is different from the civil rights movement because they want to curb making past mistakes. The article explains the evolution of using relevant information with no personal feeling. Notable evidence such as the chokehold death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, the police shooting of a twelve-year-old Tamar Rice in Cleveland, and the crippling condition of Freddie Grey after being arrested in Baltimore before dying shows the author in Dissent Magazine gave facts and not personal feelings. It provides an informative style which entails giving information and facts with no sense.

In another article by Elizabeth Day, it covers how the black lives matter movement got created. It starts with a summary of how young African Americans get killed by police officers. The article also talks at length about the frequent protests and how the police officers are trying to stop it. Relevant information and videos about the movement get discussed in this article (Rickford, 2016). For instance, videos of Eric garner who gets placed in a chokehold, and a video at a pool party showing a white police officer throwing a 14-year-old black girl on the ground and pinning her down and pulling a gun on two teenage boys. According to Day, black people were nearly three times as likely as white people to be mistreated, arrested, and killed by the police officers in 2014, and at least 101 of the black people were unarmed.

According to Martin Luther King Jr, “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” The mission of the black lives matter movement is to help in campaigning against the violence imposed on black people. To counter the silence that Martin Luther is talking about, members in black lives matter believe they are right, and they are protesting to make the police brutality unacceptable (Clayton, 2018). Generally, innocent young African Americans are losing their lives from white police officers brutality as covered in Dissent Magazine and other related articles and sources. Most of these sources give their views and opinion, stating facts and providing facts and quotes that show a good understanding of the events. Furthermore, various sources show pictures and videos for an excellent visual representation of the chain of events and the sharing of personal stories to show how African Americans are affected (Hill, 2017).

References

Shor, F. (2015). “Black Lives Matter”: Constructing a New Civil Rights and Black Freedom Movement. New Politics, 15(3), 28.

Clayton, D. M. (2018). Black lives matter and the civil rights movement: A comparative analysis of two social changes in the United States. Journal of Black Studies, 49(5), 448-480.

Hill, S. (2017). Precarity in the Era of# BlackLivesMatter. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 45(3/4), 94-109.

Rickford, R. (2016, January). Black lives matter: Toward a modern practice of mass struggle. In New Labor Forum (Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 34-42). Sage, CA: Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications.