Black Lives Matter Unit: A Social Analysis

A necessary and common fight for equality has been one that has survived throughout all of man’s existence. Due to recent racial divide and the product of racial profiling, a movement has risen up to combat these common issues. The most recent and most well-covered is the Black Lives Matter Movement. Even though it has been lauded by some media sources and individuals as the next great movement to champion for civil rights, the Black Lives Matter movement is not the same as the African-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s nor is it likely to be as successful. If the Black Lives Matter Movement continues with discrepancies in ideology, lack of clear leadership, and trends of hate, the movement is doomed to fail.

I remember writing about the rhetoric of Black Lives Matter movement in the first in-class reflection essay. As for me, the rhetoric of protesting and marching against police violence and inequality is an effective way of making your voice heard. Police brutality and misconduct has become a major controversial issue in today’s society. Dr. Thomas Jurkanin’s lecture about on the topic “The Current State of Policing in America”, gave me a chance to understand the side of the story that is almost never focused on. Dr. Jurkanin is a current associate professor of Criminal Justice at MTSU, and has spent 40 years of his career in the field of criminal justice. Dr. Jurkanin took us behind the scene and presented us the issues that the police face in our society, why and how we can work to make the situation better. He started by giving us more details about how he got into policing and stating that he is pro-police based on his experience. Dr. Jurkanin then gives us an understanding of how the society wants the police to become an exceptional being by attaining the virtue of the greatest men in all of mankind. In fact, poll data has shown that police are

Violence is inevitable; it is everywhere. From wars, terrorist acts, mass genocides to your local killings and robberies. The topic lately has been crimes against blacks; the most popular cases today seem to be Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin. We, the black community, start movements to notify the public about the issue of police officers and others committing these crimes against us, but most of the crimes committed against us are done by us, so we need to notify ourselves first. Instead of starting these movements to make a change, let us try gaining respect for our race, let us try coming together as one, and let us try taking responsibility for our actions. The change does not start with starting movements; it starts with us. These are not the police’s children, nor the white people’s children, these are our children. We have to make a change for them because if we don’t then no one else will.

Police brutality in America has been known to put fear in the lives of many Americans. Although police brutality is played out across all avenues of the media and many people see this happening, it yet does not change the fact that racism still exists in the justice system of America. People in positions of power yet have not done anything to rectify the situation and this has lead to the rise of “Black Lives Matter” movement. Numerous opportunities have been presented to officials to speak up about this one huge problem in America, yet there is so much more that can be done to help better the racial tension between police and people of color. If the racial tension between law enforcement and people of color continues to grow in America

In May of 2015, Bill Nye gave a commencement speech at Rutger University where he encouraged graduate students to be involved in lifelong social action pertaining to climate change and racial issues. In hopes to encourage the graduating class to vote in the next election to better the country, Nye states:

movement in this nation because. It shows how black people are battling for Justice with marching and protesting. Another reason for this movement is that black people are getting shot down by police in their own communities and neighborhoods.

During the last few years, there has been a lot of talk about the Black Lives Matter movement, an international activist movement, originating in the African-American community that campaigns against violence and systemic racism toward black people. But in the 21st century, it is difficult to fathom the fact that America is still divided when it comes to racial issues. Many African-American men have been brutally murdered by the police and this has sparked anger and rage in the black community towards police officers that put their lives down every day to protect and serve their communities. This tension between the black community and police officers needs to be demolished in order for communities to truly become unified and concerted. It

The Black Lives Matter Movement created a police reform on the policy agenda and has

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a forward-thinking transcendentalist, concluded that, "Unless you try something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow." This is to say that you have to push your comfort zone in order to grow as a member of the human race; a statement I wholeheartedly agree with, to an extent. I was recently a part of a play which dealt with the issues of police brutality and racial inequality in America. Essentially it deals with 6 high school-aged kids, how race affects their daily lives, and how they all react when one of their own is shot and killed by a police officer coming home to Northern Virginia from Baltimore. After each show, a moderator from the Black Lives Matter Movement would lead a post-show

Discrimination is a struggle that African Americans know all too well. The Black Lives Matter strives to stand up for those wronged by society and also raise awareness to an issue that has surprisingly gone unresolved. The articles “ Black lives Matter: A movement takes shape”, and “ The condition of black lives is one of mourning “ both show the dire need for the black lives matter movement through a combination of appeals that allows them to draw attention to different aspects of the problems without having to directly say it.

Movements, such as Black Lives Matter, have come into inception in recent years mostly in part to injustices they see in the judicial system, the way they see law enforcement’s treatment of African Americans, and to rebuild the powerful movement that was existent in the civil rights era.

The movement continued its encounter beyond racial police violence to make sure change. “Because of social media we reach people in the smallest corners of America. We are plucking at a cord that has not been plucked forever. There is a network and a hashtag to gather around. It is powerful to be in alignment with our own people.” (De Choudhury et al., 2015) ‘Reformist and Revolutionary’ is a social action that fits in with the Black Lives Matter movement. Reformist regularly pursue to help bring about change without challenging the limitations of legal systems however it is often that the motivation is the legal change. Revolutionary disputes that change can’t happen unless there is a change within the legal system for instance; social, political and economic. This backs up the movement as the Black Lives matter movement aims to make sure that change occurs within the judicial system. There aiming for a new social direction. The main focus is to change the political system and the American Districts perspective on viewing police officers who use excessive force, which is leading to the deaths of black

What black lives matter encourages use with the use of images, is to not turn a blind eye to the injustice that happens to minority groups. In the article How social media jumpstarted the Black Lives Matter movement Connor lays out a key moment in the BLM movement that were all due to the spread of images via the internet “Rice was detained while videotaping the arrest of Tyrone Harris Jr., a young African American man who had just been shot by police and who was then lying on the ground, handcuffed. Rice's uploaded video was retweeted thousands of time. For some Twitter users, it served as an immediate reminder of the images they had seen exactly one year earlier, when 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer,

Black people have come very far, but there is still a long way to go that I even consider to be very difficult than what has already done because of a well-designed system to oppress black people. The most known movement of resistance against the discourses of legitimation in contemporary life could be the Black Lives Matter movement that has become a global movement against white supremacy. This is the movement that has shown the resistance to the shootings of black people by the police where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for death. It is also intended to build connections between Black people and their allies to fight anti-Black racism. This movement proclaim equal right, but What’s more problematic is how other

According to a survey taken by the Pew Research Center, only 40 percent of whites and 65 percent of African Americans support the Black Lives Matter Movement (Horowitz, Menasce, Livingston). We see the oppression, the profiling, the death toll and most still do not support their equality. I raised the question earlier that we cannot blame ourselves for forgetting about the Native American population since they did not seek attention, yet we hear and see the oppression of African Americans and we still do not support them. Can we really blame the minority groups when we refuse to support them regardless of what side of the coin they lie on? Everyone will have a different outlook, but the information is out there. Literature like Oates’ and Alexie’s