Black Lives Matter Movement and Racial Profiling
Alisha Joseph
Ms. Jenkins
English 101-Monday
11/5/18
Black Lives Matter Movement and Racial Profiling
African Americans have always been historically been treated as less than Caucasians in America. Black people have been enslaved since the beginning and founding of America. White people had used their power to make African Americans seem inferior to them. Even when slavery had ended there was still racism and racial profiling. The social inequality of slavery is similar to our current issues. African Americans are still oppressed by a racially powerful system in which they were violated and controlled by Caucasians . African Americans once again are being treated lesser and are essentially become oppressed by the hands of white power in America all over again. This is where the Black Lives Matter Movement comes into play. The black lives matter movement is an international spread of awareness of racism against African Americans. The movement originates in the African American community and they spread their awareness through campaigning and protesting. The Black Lives Matter Movement is a new civil rights movement to fight against this new form of racism. It’s stating that race matters in a society where race is considered insignificant. The Black Lives Matter Movement is trying to shift away from colorblindness to color consciousness. It’s not ignoring that racism is still a problem in the United States.Regularly the movement speaks out against police killings of African Americans, but they also talk about issues such as racial profiling and inequality among the races. Inspiration for the movement came from the Civil Rights Movement. However, the Black Lives Matter Movement was not made into an organization until a tragic death of an African American teenager blew up social media and the news. The key elements that keep the Black Lives Matter Movement alive and relevant are racial profiling, police brutality, and racism.
The Black Lives Matter movement came about after the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012. Trayvon was an African American male that lived in Miami, Florida. He was visiting his father in Sanford; Florida and he had a confrontation with a man by the name of George Zimmerman. George Zimmerman was the neighborhood watch coordinator of that area. In that neighborhood there had been recent robberies, so they had decided to create the neighborhood watch and George Zimmerman had agreed to head it. On the evening of February 26th , Trayvon Martin had left his house to go to the store. George Zimmerman had called the police department and reported Martin as a suspicious guy. The police then told Zimmerman to follow Martin, but they told him to do so from inside his vehicle. Zimmerman had disregarded the instruction and took matters into his own hands. He got into a confrontation with Martin which led him to shoot Martin fatally in the chest. Zimmerman claimed self-defense because he was injured during the encounter and he was not charged at the time. The outraged Martin’s parents and caused them to make sure their voice was heard. They contacted attorneys and a publicist who made the case known worldwide. The case became a focus on national media and was reported on CNN , ABC News , and more . This case was reaching the attention of youth and older generations due to its appearance on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. A petition was started to demand that George Zimmerman was prosecuted against and the petition received over two million signatures within a few weeks. Zimmerman was later taken to court and acquitted for second degree murder and manslaughter charges.
This case outraged the African American community and began to cause debates about self-defense laws and racial profiling against African Americans. The hashtag “#BlackLivesMatter” took over social media websites. The death of two more African Americans named Michael Brown and Eric Garner in 2014 sparked the movement even more. Both were unarmed African American males who were killed after confrontation with the police. Michael Brown was shot six times by an officer by the name of Darren Wilson. Wilson claimed that Brown had charged at him, so he fired. However, witness accounts said that Brown had his hands up in surrerndered and was mouthing the words “ don’t shoot” . Brown was fired at twelve times and ended being hit six of those times. Eric Garner was put into a chokehold by his arresting officer for about fifteen seconds and Garner’s cause of death was difficulty breathing due to chest compression. The use of chokeholds is prohibited by the police department; However, Daniel Pantaleo and Justin Damico had denied the use of a chokehold on Eric Garner. The African American community had looked at this unacceptable because the officers in both situations were not charged. The hashtag “#BlackLivesMatter” once again struck social media. The people that started this hashtag were Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors , and Opal Tometi expanded this project to a national network. They have over thirty chapters local chapters that they expanded on from 2014 to 2016. The organization now speaks out against injustice, police brutality and racial profiling of African Americans. According to a Pew study , the hashtag “#BlackLivesMatter” has been used over thirty million times and at least seventeen thousand times a day. The black lives matter stresses that it has a very loose structure. Garza , one of the founders stated that there is not one leader of the movement and that everyone involved in the movement is a leader.
The movement sparked a controversy in America because African Americans are pushing that black lives matter instead of saying all lives matter. This was seen as a socially acceptable way to counter the argument of the black lives matter movement. The all lives matter movement is critiquing the black lives movement because of all the civil disobedience it causes. The Black Lives Matter Movement is criticized because one of the main ways that they make their voice heard is through protesting. To people critiquing the movement , they feel that African Americans will not gain the sympathy of the public and make a change in society until they go beyond protesting . The all lives matter movement id dismissive of the black lives matter movement because it disregards the statement . A majority of Americans believe that America has moved past racial inequality . In a survey done in 2009 after the election of President Barrack Obama over two-thirds of Americans said that America as a whole has overcome racism and that black people had reached racial equality. People that critique the black lives matter movement believe that the idea of the movement is limiting and a form of racism .
Racial profiling will continue to be stressed by the Black Lives Matter Movement. By definition, racial profiling is the use of race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed an offense . The Black Lives Matter Movement proclaims that African Americans are profiled as a threat to society because of their skin color. Essentially, an African American is being pictured as a threat in today’s world. A common stereotype of African Americans is that they are criminals or more likely to partake in criminal activity. According to Vanessa Williamson “Over two million people are incarcerated in America, almost one in one hundred adults, with about five million others on probation or parole. The people who bear the brunt of the criminal justice system are disproportionately black”. One example of this was when two African American males were arrested at a Starbucks. On April 12th , 2018 Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson entered their local Starbucks in Philadelphia. The two gentlemen had requested to use their bathroom and they were told that the bathroom was for paying customers only. Nelson and Robinson then sat down at one of the tables without ordering anything. The police were called, and the men were asked to leave . But, the gentlemen said that they were waiting for a colleague so they could conduct a business meeting. Nelson and Robinson were then taken into police custody and later released. Another example of racial profiling was an incident that happened in Dallas, Texas in September of 2018 . A man by the name of Botham Jean was shot and killed by a Dallas police officer. Amber Guyer , the police officer claimed that she thought Jean was an intruder to her apartment. However, she failed to realize that she was on the wrong floor of the building. She claimed that she had worked a fifteen-hour shift and she did not notice that she parked on the wrong floor or that the apartment had a door mat that her apartment did not have. When Guyer had arrived at the apartment, she had thought Jean was a burglar and she shot him. Another instance of racial profiling happened at a Georgia Subway. An African American family of eight stopped at a Subway for dinner. The family had paid for their food, sat down, and began eating. One of the Subway employees called the police department to report that the family was suspicious and she had also said that the family was filling their water cups with sodas. The police officer that responded to the scene confronted the family about the issue apologized to them after learning that they did nothing wrong. All three of these instances show how African Americans are seen as “dangerous” or “threatening” to society. African Americans as a whole are seen as criminals in society. As shown in the last example an African American family cannot even sit down at a public restaurant without being accused as being a threat. They even are not safe from racial profiling in their own homes
These instances were all reported to the Black Lives Matter Movement and sparked the need of the organization speaking out even more against racial profiling and police brutality. According to a study of nationwide data from Washington University in St. Louis African Americans are more likely to be killed by police than non-blacks. More specifically however, the study showed that nearly sixty percent of African American women who have been killed by the police were unarmed during their interaction with the police. This statistic along with several of the instances of police brutality prompted the “ Hands up, don’t shoot” campaign. This campaign mostly became a popular movement after the Michael Brown case that was earlier mentioned. Protesters of this case along with many other adopted the hands up pose . The hands up pose to the black lives matter movement was pose of protest. Members of the protest were told to throw their hands up if they were angry and if they wanted justice. The movement shows the anger and distress of the African American community..
The goal of the African American community with the creation of the Black Lives Matter Movement is to raise awareness for issue. They want to stress how common police brutality and racial profiling against African Americans is and they want to push for change . The hashtag “#blacklivesmatter” still begins to trend on Twitter especially after another tragic incident of police brutality or racial profiling against African Americans. “ #BlackLivesMatter is emblematic of a wider trend – the blossoming role social media plays in all kinds of activist movements.” This movement is paving the way for other movements such as “#lovewins” and “#MeToo”. The Black Lives Matter Movement sees social media as easiest way to reach their audience. They also see this way as clear and more effective . “One key finding of the Pew study reveals that black and Hispanic social media users are more likely than white social media users to see social media as an effective tool for political engagement.” . This statistic supports why the black lives Matter movement turns to social media for recognition on its issues. They feel as though they actually have a voice and that they will actually be heard if they voice their issues and concerns through a social media platform.
Black Lives Matter Movement is a new civil rights movement to fight against this new form of racism. It’s stating that race matters in a society where race is considered insignificant. The Black Lives Matter Movement is trying to shift away from colorblindness to color consciousness. It’s not ignoring that racism is still a problem in the United States.
The Black Lives Matter movement needs to continue to grow as a social movement. It should try to avoid becoming a civil rights lawyer led movement like the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s where the leaders distanced themselves from the people they were advocating for. The Black Lives Matter Movement has local chapters across the United States that can be used to address racism at the local level. The Black Lives Matter Movement should focus on gaining support and educating their communities about colorblind racism to build up. There also needs to be legal challenges and new laws and policies to replace the race neutral ones in the criminal justice system that cause racial disparities. The policies at every level of the criminal justice system need to be looked at to ensure that they aren’t more harmful to one race over the others.These new policies are a ways off for the Black Lives Matter Movement. The most important thing the Black Lives Matter Movement can do next is educate America about colorblind racism, change public opinion and gain support. Race does matter, black lives matter and it will take a fundamental shift in the public to believe that they matter in order to change the criminal justice system and American society.
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