Analysis Of The Poem ' Power ' By Audre Lorde

The threat issued against The Howard University community is another evidence of the discrimination that exists in our community. The final statement "After all, it's not murder if they're black" supports the point that Claudia Rankine uses in her essay "The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning" saying that Dead Blacks are a part of normal life here. In that essay, she provides several cases of dead blacks to support the argument that the lives of Black people do not matter for Whites. The recent threat against Howard University Community is another proof for black community of our reality; a reality where blacks are seen as an inferior class, as persons who should not have rights.Claudia Rankine states all these points to support her

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a loosely‐coordinated, nationwide movement dedicated to ending police brutality that rose to prominence in late 2014. It takes its name from a hashtag started by three Black feminist activists Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi but the movement and the hashtag are not identical (Freelon, McIlwain, & Clark, 2016). BLM has achieved national reputation through their online and offline organizing, obtaining extensive news media coverage and glowing references in music and entertainment television. Based on a horrendous incident that sparked a concern for a lot of Black people across the world, the sudden need for a social movement was born called BLM. Black Lives Matter is a national organization working for the validity of Black life and also working to rebuild the Black liberation movement. Black Lives Matter broadens the conversation and highlight the incidents around state violence to include the ways in which Black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state. This referring to the ways in which Black lives are deprived of basic human rights and dignity. According to the article The Murder of Walter Scott, which talks about race and class, “African Americans are less than 13% of the U.S. population yet they are nearly 50% of those killed by the police. North Charleston has a population of 104,000, 47% Black and the police force is 80% white (Miah, 2015)”.

Lately in the media police brutality has been a very popular topic. Most of the instances reported in the media are of white police officers killing African Americans for seemingly nothing. These reports have strengthened the divide between both races. In “White Rage” by Carol Anderson the issue of police brutality is touched on within the first few words of her essay. Anderson talks about many acts of aggression at the hands of white men, and she seems to really focus on an unarmed African American male who was shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. “Black and Blue,” by Garnette Cadogan continues with the struggles of police brutality in America, but also touches on the abuse in his home country of Jamaica. Cadogan

This theme helps illuminate how black people came to be treated in America both when slavery existed and beyond into today’s society. The theme that black people are disposable bodies within American society. Because of the tradition of treating black people as objects or whose value strictly came from their ability to make profit, the idea of what it means to be black in America is imbedded in the danger of losing one’s body. Although slavery has ended, the racism remains as a violence inflicted on black people’s bodies. Coates is more than happy to emphasize that racism is an instinctive practice.

A young man’s brutal death at the hands of the police is found justified in a court of law due to his “suspicious” appearance: a black hoodie and his hands in his pocket. An elderly woman is fatally shot in her home for her relation to a suspected criminal. A married man with two toddlers is choked to death after a minor traffic stop by an officer who later claimed that his unarmed victim was wielding a gun. These people all have a few commonalities: the color of their skin, their presumed guilt at first sight, and their ultimate unjustified death administered by the law force. These are not uncommon occurrences. Due to the staggeringly disproportionate rate of African-Americans killed by the police, and the underlying rampant racial profiling, police brutality towards blacks in America must be called to light.

On July 13, 2015, Sandra Bland committed suicide in Waller County Jail in Hempstead, Texas. Bland was an African-American, and was subject to police brutality. A few days before her death, the police placed Bland in jail as a result of traffic confrontation that did escalate to violence. Her incident with the police is a prime example of the racism that goes on today. Though policies were passed to combat acts of prejudice against blacks, there is always an underlying hatred towards African-Americans that continues to manifest itself. This is because racism in its social has not been as combated, which causes people to continue to live in a continuing era of white supremacy. The better-treatment of white people, causes black people to live

Though many white men fight with violence, all black men must fight back with acceptance and love, which poses significant physical threat to the black man. The nonviolent black man is brave enough to act on what he knows: a black man is no better or worse than a white man. By acting rationally and without violence, a person can authentically maintain his or her dignity by being respectful, courageous, and accepting. These qualities are especially admirable when they exist in all areas of a person’s life, even in the face of physical danger, violence, and fear. When a person chooses to act on what he or she knows is right, this person understands that “to act is to be committed,” but “to be committed is to be in danger” (9). A white American man takes no risk in claiming that an African American is inferior, especially since his fundamental reason for believing so, that the black

On August 9th 2014, an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown was shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. A day following Brown’ s death, a riot broke out in Ferguson which caught the attention of the entire country. The fact that black people suffers disproportionally from police violence isn’ t uncommon given that deadly use of force by the police towards blacks under 21 years of age is 20% compared to 8.7% to whites (Johnson et al., 2014). Perhaps what is surprising is the speed of organization and the intensity of young people in Ferguson to use the death of Michael Brown as a final straw in the injustice and racism blacks suffers to this day. For this paper, I shall analyze the Ferguson riot under the #BlackLivesMatter

Police brutality is a major issue in today’s society. Many African Americans tend to avoid the police for that very reason. A campaign was started in 2012 against police brutality and the unfair treating of African Americans entitled, Black Lives Matter. This movement was met with controversy as well as support from the American people. This movement has followed several controversial police brutality cases in the United States including, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Sandra Bland. All African American and all killed in the presence of a police officer, with no convictions. These three cases have been some of the biggest cases in the Black Lives Matter campaign. This campaign is determined to make sure that Black lives are treated just as equally as white live and Hispanic lives, because black lives matter

According to a ProPublica analysis of the FBI data, black men are more likely than white men killed by police shooting. This resulted in the creation of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ an activist movement in

This article started out as a post on Facebook, where I openly expressed my pain and frustration surrounding the death of Sandra Bland, and the possibility that the black community has some culpability in her demise. I felt the need to share it on a broader platform, while expanding on the concept on which I make my claim. Let’s discuss, with veracity, what happened to Sandra Bland.

This type of death presents a unique set of problems because of the constant media attention and the public debates that often occur surrounding the shooting, and if a trial ensues it is often highly publicized, as is the verdict. Consequently, media attention can lead to friends and families constantly reliving the tragic event over and over, thus compounding their grief. The untimely death of young Black males by police shootings also has implications for social work practice and particularly for social workers who practice in the realm of social justice. Death by police shooting can lead to a distrust of law enforcement officers and the criminal justice system within the Black community; moreover,

Cone feels that one of the most serious charges that have been leveled against advocates of Black Power are that they are black racists. It is true that blacks hate whites but the hatred is not racists. Webster defines racism as “the assumption that psycho cultural traits and capacities are determined by

“Black Lives Matter” —an intended progression in society without a hierarchy, merely marching forward by spur of the people. Started by three sisters who continue to keep the organization a chapter-based, left wing social justice operation, it can best be described as “Not a moment, but a movement” by those that follow it. The case that began this outcry involved a man —George Zimmerman— whom, according to Lizette Alvarez and Cara Buckley (2013), “was found not guilty [of] second-degree murder [and] was also acquitted of manslaughter, a lesser charge.” (para. 1). Since its initial start in 2013, the movement follows and protests against police brutality and civil injustice towards individuals of the Black minority; however, this is a prime example of hate breeding hate as the movement, has opened a new floodgate full of antipathy aimed towards the White-community and Law Enforcement Officials. In short, the initial idea of “Black Lives Matter” —which is to bring civil justice to the Black-community— is a good concept, but the execution by its adherents are, ironically, bigoted; the movement needs to either evolve its state of thought or disperse before it further segregates America.

Akin to intersectional romance fiction, poetry is equivalently as radical. Poetry magnifies the significance of language as a revolutionary tool, one that liberates women and cultivates an environment in which women are free to address their aspirations and anxieties while condemning the ideals of a society that operates under the canons of male chauvinism. In a collection of letters published as a tribute to the late Audre Lorde in Off Our Backs, a feminist newspaper journal written for women by women, one anonymous contributor discusses how Lorde “encourages all women to find their own means of expression, their own poetry to value and to use” (Tyler 32) in her piece “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”. In the piece, Lorde discusses how for women, poetry is not a nonessential indulgence, as Caucasian men throughout history have suggested through how they render poetry as an opportunity to “cover [a] desperate wish for imagination without insight” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36). Lorde contends that poetry is a “vital necessity of [the] existence” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36) of women because it establishes the infrastructure on which women “predicate [their] hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36). Lorde’s text motivates women to exercise “the power of the word, a freedom for women greatly feared by…patriarchal society” (Tyler 32). Lorde states the poetry