Analysis: The Black Lives Matter Movement

Recently in American politics, the Black Lives Matter movement has been publicized at large. There is a lot of controversy around BLM because many people believe that it is a hate group targeting all police officials and white citizens. The group’s goal is to address a problem in America, like racial profiling, asking why people who are white that shoot innocent church goers are arrested and taken into custody while a black teenager jaywalking across the street is shot, and racism in the everyday part of their lives. Black Lives Matter wants to open the eyes of people who do not see a problem and hopefully fix a broken system. Racism is a touchy subject for many people because they do not believe racism is as detrimental to society since

Black Lives Matter believes that police officers are more likely to stop a black individual because of their skin color. There are multiple examples of black men being stopped like Freddie Gray. Freddie Gray was a 25-year-old male who was arrested by Baltimore Police on April 12, 2015. City officials say there is no logical reason why he was arrested. He was only pursued because he saw an officer and started running. After he was caught, he did not resist but wound up yelling in pain as he was handcuffed and thrown into a police car. It is stated that Gray’s leg injury and his asthma did not kill him, it was the “grave injury to his spinal cord” (Graham). If there was no reason to arrest Gray in the first place, then why was he? If police officers did not racially profile individuals, would Freddie Gray still be alive? BLM demands that police officers are put through more training so situations like this do not happen

One of the main issues is that people believe that the movement hates white people and that they are anti-police. They go on to explain that they do not hate white people, they hate white supremacy. White supremacy, in short, is “suggesting that in order for white lives to matter, black lives cannot” (“11 Major Misconceptions About the Black Lives Matter Movement”). They want to explain that the Black Lives Matter movement is to “affirm the value of black life in practical and pragmatic ways” (“11 Major Misconceptions About the Black Lives Matter Movement”). Their examples of doing so are, fighting inequality and gentrification which forces people out of their homes and communities that they have been in generation after generation. BLM does not hate police officers because they see them as human beings, and humans have “inherent value” to their life. They simply do not want officers to see black citizens as violent and dangerous. BLM wants police officers to accommodate black people just as they would their fellow white