Cultural Movements: Evolution and Impact

A cultural movement is a change in the way a number of different disciplines approach their work. This is including different art forms, sciences, and philosophies. Throughout history, different regions of the world have gone through their own independent sequence of cultural movement. When cultural movements go through revolutions, genres tend to get criticized and mixed up, resulting in new genres of cultural movement being generated as old ones fade. It could be because as generations change, their mentality and analyzation of what’s being culturally put forth has grown stale and repetitive. An obsession emerges among the mainstream with ideals of a new movement, and the old one falls into neglect, is altered to fit the new, or sometimes

it dies out entirely. But often it continues along and occasionally makes reappearances. In order to define black pop culture we must individually define pop culture and discuss the black influence on pop culture. Pop culture are the cultural activities or commercial products reflecting, suited to, or aimed at the tastes of the general masses of people. Also cultural patterns that are widespread within a population. Black influence has shown various evidence/product throughout communities. Black influence in pop culture ranges in music, fashion, dancing and even body shapes have been heavily influenced by the African-American community, but the credit has not been given to the originators. That’s what I would like to discuss throughout this paper. The misrepresentation/non-representation of black influence in pop culture and how a movement by the name of Black Lives Matter is helping to change that.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an international activist movement, originating in the African American community, which campaigns against violence toward African Americans or people of color.

BLM regularly organizes protests around the deaths of black people in killings by law enforcement officers, and broader issues of racial profiling, police brutality, and racial inequality in the United States criminal justice system. They are working to rebuild the Black liberation movement. Black Lives Matter goes beyond the narrow nationalism that can be seen within Black communities. It doesn’t merely call on black people to love black, live black, and buy black. Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of black queer and trans-gendered folks, black people with disabilities, undocumented blacks, folks with records, women, and all black lives along the gender spectrum. Rooted in the experiences of black people in this country who actively resist our de-humanization, Black Lives Matter is a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society .It is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes. The Black Lives Matter movement was created in 2012 after Trayvon Martin’s murderer by George Zimmerman, who was acquitted for his crime, while dead 17-year old Trayvon was placed on trial for his own murder. Black Lives Matter became nationally recognized for the street demonstrations following the 2014 deaths of two African American young males: Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York City. Since Ferguson, many other African Americans deaths have been protested by the movement, including Tamir Rice, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Jonathan Ferrell, Sandra Bland, Samuel DuBose and Freddie Gray. In the Summer of 2015, Black Lives Matter began to publicly challenge politicians—including politicians in the 2016 United States presidential election—to state their positions on BLM issues. Black

Lives Matter has become a marketing tool in the awakening of non-representation of African Americans. Hence the hashtag: #BlackLivesMatters. Cultural Movements as marketing tools can achieve great things and can inspire people to turn their social situations into a moment of revolution. They can catapult the mindsets of a society into anotherway of thinking and they really can make a positive difference in the world today. By using the means of social media or any media for that matter to get the point across that #BlackLivesMatter, in return rallies others toward the movement. It gives those who are unaware the opportunity to be educated and enlightened to the idea and message that the cultural movement is trying to get across.
The Black Lives Matter is not the only movement known to emerge from the black community. #BlackLivesMatter has its roots. It’s rooted in the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the non-violent American Civil Rights Movement. Movements that promoted racial pride and ethnic cohesion as well as adopting a more militant posture in the face of racism. It’s rooted in the idea that "black is beautiful." Correlating with time where there was a resurgence of interest in, and an embrace of, elements of African culture within African-American culture that had been suppressed or devalued to conform to Eurocentric America. Natural hairstyles, such as the afro, and African clothing, such as the dashiki, gained popularity. More importantly, the African-American aesthetic encouraged personal pride and political awareness among African Americans. Now while knowing the roots of this movement, the question to be asked is who, demographically speaking, is this cultural movement for? The answer would be pretty simple right: Blacks. But what if Blacks aren’t the only ones to benefit from this movement. What if I said that this movement, out of anyone, is for whites? Reason being that #BlackLivesMatter is a cry and demand to those who don’t fully grasp the concept that blacks are poorly represented.
What #BlackLivesMatter is not saying is ONLY Black Lives Matter. Contrary to the rebuttal of #AllLivesMatter, this is a society in which the lives and value of African Americans have been deemed insignificant by others. The social systems in which we live do not adhere to everyone. In sociology, groups and institutions that work together or intersect to make a complete whole are known as social systems. As a concept and academic theory, social systems are used to identify relationships that connect people and organizations, which ultimately contribute to a larger institution. For example, public education is a kind of social system because it attempts to unify people by providing standard education, which will allow them to participate in and contribute to the economy, thus strengthening the overall society. While it may seem like a fairly simple or straight-forward concept, social systems can be complicated or difficult to understand depending on the context in which they are being applied. In the broadest sense, you can think of social systems as a way of breaking down a larger group, such as an entire society, and categorizing them to understand how their interactions combine to create a functional whole. The problem with this society and its social systems is that the breaking down of a “larger group” excludes a smaller group. The “standard education” being administrated doesn’t adhere to the smaller minority group. That’s where cultural movements such as Black Lives Matter steps in, to educate and give awakening to a society that is in the dark when it comes to unjust social constructs. To provide that positive representation for African Americans that is lacking in today’s society. To announce to a world that black lives are inclusive to all lives mattering.