Analysis: The Black Lives Matter Movement

The Black Lives Matter movement was founded on July 13, 2013 by three women named Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. These women are well known writers and activists, and have won awards for their efforts on discussing oppression against black people. Some look down on the Black Lives Matter movement, claiming that it only segregates races, and others look up to the movement as a way to potentially reach equality. I believe that Black Lives Matter is an important movement that should be spread and understood everywhere. Police brutality is an immediate cause for why this movement came to be as important as it is. The movement first became a hashtag due to the fact that an unarmed black teen named Trayvon Martin was killed

The white race dominates the United States, making them superior over minorities. Especially since the country was founded during times of racism, it can be seen that racism is also embedded in all social institutions and structures, as seen by Nicki Lisa Cole. As a result, this gives whites privileges that people of color do not have. On average, whites get paid significantly more than minorities, especially blacks, causing the wage gap. A graph provided by Tanzina Vega shows that the difference in wage gap between black and white workers is 26.7%, and continuously widens as time passes. The information shown proves that equality is getting further apart, calling for a means of change. Another form of systemic racism is employment discrimination. “Since 1990 white applicants received, on average, 36% more callbacks than black applicants and 24% more callbacks than Latino applicants with identical résumés,”(Quillian). People of color receive the highest amount of discrimination wherever they go, no matter their accomplishments. This racism puts extra pressure on them, forcing them to work harder to live an average life.

Thus, because of police brutality, and systemic racism, the Black Lives Matter movement came about to raise awareness of the oppression and abuse black people face.. As stated earlier, one of the ways people raise awareness of these issues are by hashtags posted throughout social

Black Lives Matter only focuses only on African Americans and their lives. On the other hand All Lives Matter focuses on all races, and gives every individual their importance instead of continuous segregation. BLM is seen as reverse racism, as if to disregard the white race. As shown in pie charts, the majority of people that have a problem with BLM are white. Around 60 percent of white respondents were either neutral, or strongly opposed BLM. Only about 6% of all respondents believed that the BLM movement could really be effective (Horowitz). However, the BLM movement was created for black people, and solely black people. “All lives matter’ is a given, almost a cliché. So why would an audience boo a presidential candidate expressing that thought? Because the phrase ‘All lives matter’ dismisses racially structured conditions disadvantaging black people,”( Goldberg). Preaching All Lives Matter rather than Black Lives Matter disregards the oppression that black people experience from police brutality and systemic racism. In other words, All Lives Matter is not the path to gaining