What Does Black Lives Matter

The brutality of the police force has been a long worldwide problem, but especially between the years of 2012-2016. Black people are being unjustly beaten and shot in plain sight for doing nothing while being unarmed. Journal of African American Studies “Blacks are viewed as deserving of harsh treatment in the criminal justice system” (482). “Black males with more “Afrocentric” features may receive longer sentences than blacks with less Afrocentric features like lighter skin and straighter hair”(482). Nowadays it is important to know about the police force. It’s important to know our rights as citizens and be careful around cops. Not everybody is good, but not everybody is bad also. In The New York Amsterdam News 21 people were killed by Chicago police in 2008. Entire families were being attacked. They believe it’s because of their skin color and how they are different. The year of racism started off with the world seeing the police murder of Oscar Grant. “The media have pushed people away from hearing the issue of police brutality, and it has fallen off of the radar screen.”(2) “You can’t give in. They will try to make an example out of you, try to break your spirit!”(2) African Americans say do not trust the cops with anything. “They will ruin you.”(2)

The following piece of work will discuss racism within the criminal justice system by viewing the Black Lives Matter movement, the roles of law enforcement and how that effects citizens, and potential solutions to the problems in the system. Within our criminal justice system, it is evident that there is a problem by the ratio of blacks in prison, and the number of police brutality cases in the country.

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)”.

Over the past five centuries, black people have endured violence in many different ways. Today, police officers use deadly, excessive force that leads to inexcusable assaults, beatings and shootings. This demonstrates the government’s role in initiating and prolonging racial suppression and provides the explanation for police brutality to become a federal crime (Black Radical Congress, 3). In history, racist violence, police brutality, has been used to suppress the racial blacks and to preserve power and privileges for the white race.

Violence by officers in blue against African Americans is a daily occurrence. Police brutality against the African American community is not a new topic as of lately. Racial discrimination and profiling affects all, but police brutality as seen lately does not affect all races at an alarming rate as it does the African American community. “ (Contributer, 2014)” (A Herstory). When the African American community chants “Black lives matter”, they are saying it because the United States has the predisposition to say that it does not.

In the United States, studies have shown that minority citizens, particularly African Americans, are the primary victims of police brutality. This use of excessive force, when utilized by law enforcement officers, encompasses a wide range of abusive practices – racial slurs, profanity, unnecessary searches, physical abuse, and even murder. According to a report by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, 313 African Americans were killed without trial by police, security guards, and vigilantes in 2012. In other words, one extrajudicial execution of a black person occurs every 28 hours. This tension between law enforcers and minorities is hardly new, as evident by the prevalent racial discrimination between blacks and whites throughout history – slavery, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement. Although many Americans today believe that our nation is progressing into the “age of colorblindness,” blacks are three times more likely than whites to engage in police contact that result in the use of excessive force (Eith & Durose 12). The following pages will analyze how impoverished neighborhoods, negative stereotypes, and mass media contribute to the mutual antagonism between police and African Americans, ultimately setting the stage for violent conflicts. Furthermore, this paper will also investigate real-life examples of Rodney King and Michael Brown, as well as examine how American citizens have resisted against this racial oppression through both violent and peaceful campaigns.

As a country, we have made some major developments in fighting racism and injustice, but there are still many areas where we need major improvements. Particularly, there is a problem with police relations and the African American community. There is a disproportionate number of African Americans who have experienced violence from encounters with police officers than any other race or ethnic group. A recent study done by the Associated Press and NORC found that African Americans are four times more likely to describe violence against civilians by police officers a serious compared to white Americans. It also found that 80% of African American’s interviewed believe that police officers are too quick to use force and they are more likely to use it against an African American person (Collenly, et al). There is clear evidence that this is a problem that needs to be addressed in the community. The cases of Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Mike Brown and many others have brought this issue to the national spotlight and have helped people acknowledge that this is a problem in the country.

Racism and police brutality have been a topic of debate for many years. Pundits on both side of the debate argue their points. However, those who are directly affected, African Americans and other minorities know all too well the harsh reality. They have faced racism and police brutality for many decades. Police brutality remains a major concern today for those in the black community. I will review how African Americans perceive the police and in what ways can their perception be changed as well as effective conflict resolution strategies. I will conduct my research through journal articles, historical cases, books and assigned texts.

It is the same argument that has been raging on throughout history, what lives have more value? Race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, sex, religious beliefs, these are just a few of the many attributes of a person’s identity that define their place in the hierarchy of society’s worth. Sure we would like to believe that we are better than that, but the sad truth is that we use these identifiers to judge the worth of a person. People would like to believe that a person is not judged by their outward appearance, that we have moved beyond such prejudice concepts and have accepted the fact that everyone is equal. Unfortunately “All men are created equal” translates better on paper than it does in the real world. Today we face the question of inequalities in police procedural conduct. The correlation between race and the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers has come into question in our society, and there has been an outcry on police misconduct due to racial injustices.

In today’s society Black Americans face many hardships including police brutality, racism, and classism. The way we determine the most crucial problem in today’s society or which problem should be addressed first is by realizing which problem attacks us more as a people. Amongst all these the most crucial problem would be police brutality. This crucial problem is tied to our past by how we as a people were beat, brutalized, and murdered by police officers during the Civil Rights Movement. Police brutality, I believe will help us grow as a society and rise up against this brutality. As the brutality increases more and more Black Americans will start to unite as one. Going forward as a society, we should raise awareness about how many young and

Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Isaac Holmes, Terry Price, Brandon Jones, Anthony Hill, and James Howard Allen. This is only a small sample of Black lives taken by police in the past year. In November 2015, police took 22 Black lives. That equates to one Black life every 33 hours. Do I have your attention now? It’s clear that “Black Lives Matter” is more than just a slogan, hash tag, or organization; it’s a movement. This movement has lead to many protests, and confrontations with police. Not only that, but the controversial question, “Do Black lives matter, or do all lives matter,” has been raised to our current presidential candidates.

On Monday, October 24th, a photo surfaced on the internet of Melanie Burton, a white first year Xavier University student, in black face. The photo was captioned, “who needs white when black lives matter.” Melanie Burton and her friends took the photo privately in their dorm room and posted it on Burton’s snapchat. One of Burton’s snapchat followers took a screenshot of the photo and sent it to other students, who later shared it on their various social media pages including Facebook, Instagram, and twitter. As a result, Xavier students expressed their frustration with the incident on their social media platforms. Similarly, on that same day, another photo of a skeleton wearing a Dashiki with a noose around its neck surfaced on the internet.

It is well-known that African-Americans have been incontrovertibly and disproportionately targeted and brutalized by vigilantes and law enforcement all throughout American societal history. However, this specific problem continues to exist as an issue of concern in contemporary American society, wherein African-Americans remain inequitably treated by law enforcement. To illustrate, African-Americans make up a mere 13 percent of the United States population but account for 40 percent of the prison population and further, are drastically overrepresented in statistics of state-sanctioned violence and murder. This is especially noteworthy when considering that America has the highest incarceration rate in the world and that many American city police departments kill unarmed black men at higher rates than the U.S. murder rate. Ultimately, this portion of the essay will be a study of how the history of public lynching and Jim Crow laws continue to underscore and propel the continuation of overt police brutality, excessive sentencing, and mass incarceration rates of African-American people in contemporary American society. This section will also suggest a few solutions for moving forward with this hard-pressing issue in the

The recent events occurring in America really brought to my realization that some people truly believe black lives don’t matter. In school, I grew up learning that since America abolished slavery and the Civil Rights Movement occurred that black lives are just important and equal to white lives. Gaining majority of black friends and becoming aware of current and past events, I’ve realized that many people treat black people as though their lives don’t matter. Police brutality and incarceration rates will persuade anyone to believe that black lives are treated as though they don’t matter. “The reasons organizations use the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ was not because they were suggesting that no one else’s lives matter. Rather, what they were

“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.