My Life Matters: The Black Lives Matter Movement Explained

By: Austen Wyche

This article is dedicated to Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Ahmaud Arbery, Breana Taylor, George Floyd and the many more Black Americans who have been killed either at the hands of police or by citizens who deem themselves fit to perform as law enforcement. This is dedicated to people who lost their lives, the people who had their whole lives ahead of them. This is for you. Our Lives Matter.

When I say Black Lives Matter, just like most in the movement, I would just like to clarify for those who may not know: Black Lives Matter means and insinuates that Black lives matter “too”. The movement is to spread awareness to the injustices and systemic racism that occurs and has been occurring to African Americans. The movement in no way means that (only) Black lives matter or they matter more than anyone of another race or ethnicity. Many people on certain political angles or leanings have used the movement to justify their policies as either being more liberal or conservative when, in actuality, it has little to do with a political party but solely focused on the inequalities and challenges that African-Americans face in everyday society. If you are for the betterment of African-Americans and believe that we should not face inequalities like racial profiling, police brutality, and bias in the justice system, you should support Black Lives Matter.

When I was growing up, my father always told me and my sister that we needed to be especially careful around the police. Additionally, my parents told us that if we wanted to succeed we needed to work harder than everyone else, that we have to perform at our maximum greatness just to get the amount of success that other people could achieve. I was 7 years old in 2012, and I lived in Georgia at the time the United States had re-elected its first black president, Barack Obama. My dad explained to me and my sister how monumental this was to both my parents and my grandparents, that they never believed that an African-American would be elected president while they were alive. Soon after that, the country began to rebel against the newfound diversity and inclusion that was occurring. First, a black president, then a female nominee, Hillary Clinton, the country was not ready for such monumental change. This election resulted in the reversal of change. We as a nation elected a reversal of the progression that had occurred under the Obama Administration.

This problem, however, did not start with the current administration. The problem of criminalizing innocent black people and making them appear as threats has been a problem for centuries. In the Early 20th century, Jim Crow laws and movies like Birth Of a Nation portrayed black people as animals who were a threat to the white majority, particularly the wellbeing of white women. This continued through World War II, where black soldiers that fought in the war, including my great-grandfather, were in a segregated unit from the white soldiers. My grandmother, who was born in the late 1950s, had to hide in a dresser when the Ku Klux Klan rode by her home in Waynesboro, Georgia. My other grandmother lived in a segregated town where there was a white school and a black school. When she received the offer to attend the white school as one of the first students to possibly integrate, she decided not to go in fear of retaliation by the town’s white majority. This is a common theme in the families of many African-Americans, a history of racism and bigotry has been going on for centuries back to when slavery was still occurring. Slavery and racism in the United States did not disappear, but rather it evolved systematically to the point where we are told to forget and not acknowledge its occurrence in present institutions. It will not be left in the dark.

Even with myself, my parents have had to inform my sister and me of the dangers that lie ahead of us in the future. My sister and I had a talk with my parents before we had reached the age of 10 to ensure we knew how to deal with the police. They told us: “Do what they say, all you need to do is make it home alive and safe”. In 2012, Travyon Martin, a 17-year-old boy was killed walking home from the convenience store by a man who believed he was suspicious. The man, George Zimmerman was later acquitted by a jury by the controversial stand-your-ground law in Florida. One day, my sister was having a softball practice when we lived in Fairfax County, Virginia, a predominantly white neighborhood. My mother and I were planning to pick her up, so she asked me to find her from the house down the street. I had a black hoodie on just like Trayvon did. A member of that predominantly white neighborhood could just have easily deemed me as a threat because, after all, I was a black boy running in a hoodie at nighttime. It was a disaster waiting to occur. My mother realized what she had just done and she was overwhelmed with anxiety. Luckily, everything turned out well, and my sister and I were safe without harm. The very fact my mother had to become worried for the life of her child solely based on their skin color illustrates the unfair society African Americans have to face in their daily lives. We have to practice an extra step of precaution just to make sure we don’t get killed, something a member of the majority may not ever experience.

Let's go back in history a little bit to get a context on the situation of slavery and racism in the United States. When the United States passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments giving former slaves freedom and rights of United States citizens, there was a catch. The 13th Amendment, states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”. The catch in the amendment that freed the slaves was the phrase “except as a punishment for a crime”. As a result of this loophole established in the Constitution, states across the country began to arrest black people for particularly petty crimes, such as loitering. This allowed states to mass incarcerate African-Americans to use them as labor for large companies and corporations that needed cheap labor no longer provided by slaves. This still continues today in prisons, with US prisons and jails being run by private companies that use prison labor to manufacture goods that they sell to consumers. Some products manufactured for companies like Dell, Microsoft, Target, and Macy’s have been produced using penal labor in the United States. Forced labor of prisoners has continued on since the Reconstruction Era, with presidents such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W Bush making a “War on Drugs” and “Tough on Crime” agenda that has caused the mass incarceration of African-Americans in the United States off of relatively minor felonies, such as possession of a small amount of marijuana, which is now legal in many states today. They would use terms such as “thugs” and “law and order” to insinuate racial criminalization. Sound Familiar? Offenders that were convicted of possessing drugs common in African-American neighborhoods such as crack cocaine were given mandatory severe sentences, while those convicted of drugs common in white neighborhoods like powdered cocaine and ecstasy were given more lenient sentences. This led directly to the modern-day statistic of black men having a ⅓ chance of going to jail within their lifetime, while their white counterparts have a 1/17 chance. This is not because black people are more likely to commit a crime, but because they are 6 times more likely to be arrested for the same crime that is committed by a white person. This illustrates the notion that the darker your skin color is, the more that it can be used as a weapon against you. This, at an extent, applies to all people of color; if you are not white, your skin color will be seen as a threat, therefore endangering your life.

For everyone that is going to say that Black people commit more crime than whites, I want you to realize that this statistic is not correct. White people in the United States commit over 59% of the violent crime, with black people committing a minority of violent crime in the US. Why is it that black people are arrested 6 times more likely for the same crime that is committed by a white person. Since whites commit roughly 6/10 of the violent crimes, why are blacks killed more often by the police? Black people are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by a police officer according to Statistica, even though they commit a minority of the violent crimes in the United States. This is a clear injustice in the policing system of the United States. There are also issues in the criminal justice system. In Oakland, California, while black people make up only 28% of the population, they are 60% police stops. This pattern is the same in almost every major American city such as Boston, LA, and NYC. This is just the beginning. I would like to let you know that the right to vote for African Americans is being violated as well. Politicians, the majority from the GOP, have grouped black voters into districts to minimize the worth of their vote, making majority African American districts, while numerous other districts would be majority white, in a process known as gerrymandering. The US has additionally enacted Voter ID laws, making it mandatory to have an ID when you vote, which is hard in majority-black neighborhoods where there is no access to get one. These laws are not even needed since voter fraud is non-existent in the US, and has never occurred in an election. In the 2016 election, the GOP in Arizona closed polling places in Phoenix in a Latino area, where there was one polling place for 21,000 people on one day, causing longer lines and therefore suppressing possible votes. In Georgia, Sec of State Brian Kemp enacted the “exact match” law, where if there were any grammatical with you voter registration, then you could not vote, which disproportionately hurt African-Americans, even though citizens do not process voter registrations. The government is taking away rights from minorities to stay in power, and it is simply unconstitutional.

When I state that black people live harder lives than white people, I do not mean to invalidate the experiences or struggles that white people will face. I mean that, no matter what, they will still possess a privilege that African Americans, Hispanics, and Middle Easterners will not have. The definition of white privilege is “unearned rights and benefits afforded white people in Western society because of the color of their skin”. This basically means that your skin color will not be a disadvantage to you, but in some cases actually an advantage. Some examples of everyday white privilege are being favored by the police(as shown above with police stops), the privilege of attending affluent schools segregated racially by socioeconomic status (Black students are 19 times more likely to live in poverty than white Americans), the privilege of constantly learning about your race in school (In 2013, only 8 percent of books were about people of color), being informed by media that focus on your race, the privilege of escaping violent stereotypes about your race such as violent acts committed by white people (No one assumes all white people are like Dylann Roof, a racist who killed the Charleston 9, but people associate black people with criminals), playing the colorblind card of racism (for example, stating your ancestors who came here to have a better lives are great, but immigrants from Latin America and Asia come “to steal your jobs”), and having the privilege to live ignorant of the society we live in. Just to let you know, this did not just begin. It has been going on for a long time.

There was a sudden awakening that happened after the death of George Floyd; and well newsflash: This inequality that everyone all of a sudden realized did not just happen. This has been going on for centuries. Black men in the 1800s were terrorized as a threat to white women, to the point where the negative stereotypes about black men being threats to white women still remain today. This “trend” of innocent black people being killed at the hands of the majority began in the time of slavery and never ended. From Emmitt Till in 1955 to James Boyd Jr. in 1998 to Travyon Martin in 2012, and to George Floyd in 2020. These are merely 4 examples of the constant injustice that has occurred to Black Americans throughout American history.

Overall, I would like to leave you with one message. You may not have agreed with everything or anything I have mentioned, and I believe that there are some people that are reading this that can be educated and somewhat understand what the BLM movement is about, but there are other people who do not care and do not wish to be informed. If you are of the latter, I would like you to think: If I were in this person’s shoes and I was facing a challenge every day of my life that I had to live with, would I want people to listen, or stay ahold to their beliefs so strongly that they do not listen to your voice. We worry every day about people who look like us, those we love, just based on the skin that we were born in. Please at the very least try to understand, ask a POC, look up a youtube video, or even watch a Netflix documentary. The way to end this injustice is through proper education.

Edited by: Khushi Patel

Posted June 8, 2020

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