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Black Lives Matter: Discrimination In The United States

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Words 1505
Pages 7
Bryan Carbajal

2 May 2017
Essay 4: Research Draft
In the current media there have been multiple cases of police brutality, racial profiling, and overall general violence towards black people in the U.S. It is astonishing how many incidents have been occurring lately. Therefore, many protests and riots have occurred to fight back against theses injustices. One of the organizations that were created in order to bring awareness to the reoccurring issue of inequality and violence towards black people is a movement called Black Lives Matter. As injustices continue to occur, the Black Lives Matter movement becomes more popular and the issues towards black people are starting to be heard. The growth in awareness of how people with dark skin are treated …show more content…
This is going to take some time to change. There are many people that believe that we have already reached a period where discrimination by skin color no longer exists. For this reason, people take offense by the Black Lives Matter movement and go on to say “All Lives Matter”. In order for society to come closer to equality, people must become aware that discrimination still exists and understand that the Black Lives Matter movement is meant to bring awareness to the current causes of discrimination.
Black Lives Matter is a movement that brings awareness of violence and inequality in our justice system that promotes racism towards black people in our society. “Black Lives Matter was founded by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi as both a hashtag and a political project after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin”(Miller 2016). Tryavon Martin was a teenaged boy who was unarmed, provoked, and then killed because he was allegedly up to no good and …show more content…
Society tends to fear the black man, but not the white man. For example, when a black man walks near a persons’ car they tend to lock their car door, but when a white man walks by, they don’t react this way. This is because society has been taught to be wary of the black man. People become cautious when a black person is near them and for the most part, people do this unconsciously. The Black Lives Matter movement seeks to change this train of thought. They want people to be more conscious of these subtle actions towards people of darker skin color. Researcher Greta Fowler Snyder wrote, “For instance, in a national poll conducted by Newsweek/The Daily Beast in 2012, 65% of White respondents say racial equality has been achieved or will soon be achieved (as compared with 41% of Black respondents)”(Snyder 2015). This poll shows that white people believe that they get treated with the same fairness that black people do. This brings up white privilege. Most white people do not notice they receive more benefits over black people in their day-to-day lives. White privilege is any time where a white person is given an advantage over a person of darker skin solely because of their skin tone. For this reason, people need to reevaluate how they treat people of different ethnicities. Sociologist Alan G. Johnson wrote, “whites will tend not to feel privileged by their race when they compare themselves

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