Take back the night, held on Thursday, April 9th, encapsulated the essence of unity, belongingness, liberation, expressivity, and audacity. Opal Tometi, one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matters movement, spoke about her movement and other controversial topics, in front of the Franklin and Marshall student body and faculty. She reiterated numerous sociological elements by addressing the different “isms”, including racism and sexism. She began and ended her speech addressing a quote by Martin Luther King Jr: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Tometi expressed the importance and the power of the Black Lives Matter movement. She projected race from a subjective dimension; a dimension that we created and positioned ourselves to extrapolate meanings about different elements concerning race, class, gender, etc (Tatum, 1997). She conveyed her love for each and every body, regardless of race, gender, socio-economic status, religion, and age.
While she talked …show more content…
Everyone had the ability to share, engage, and provide an insight on what they are taking back the night for, whether it was an anecdote from the past or a cosmopolitan related issues. A myriad of these speak outs incorporated an agent and a target force, whether by means of physical or verbal abuse, belligerence, or any other form of unjust social ordeals. The agent force often inflicts some form of social injustice, either covertly or overtly, on the target force (Miller, 1976). The agent force often inflicted either verbal, or non-verbal form of abuse, either through physical and emotional violence. All those who participated in the speak out demonstrated action, instead of silence (Harro, 2000). They chose to speak out against what they believed was morally corrupt or what they have experienced, and by doing so, they were accentuating matters and structure of the society that needs to be