The first amendment proposed by Thomas Jefferson became effective on Dec 15, 1791. It gives right to free speech, religion, press and petition. The freedom of speech gives citizens the right to speak their mind and is one of the most important freedoms granted to U.S. citizens. The Constitution is color blind. Skin color does not make any difference; it is racism which lies in the eyes of the beholder. Too often people empower an ordinary citizen to forget that people are to be treated alike. Lately there has been criticism over people who are exercising their rights to speak freely, more specifically, people who are part of the movement, Black LivesMatter. This movement has every right to express their feelings. The ways they are protesting …show more content…
are protected under the First Amendment. Unfortunately American culture is structured around the preservation and defense of white privilege.
Until recently, there was no protest or media attention when a police man killed a colored person, but if the victims were white, it was publicized.Different treatment is given for different group of people which violates civil rights.Black lives matter is important because the first amendment protects the voices of black lives matter movement, which enables them to advocate for less police brutality against black people, racial discrimination and injustice The main motive of black live matter is to get their right and get justice against inhuman behavior of white people. The statement Black Lives Matter is often met with the response that all lives matter. Every life is supposed to matter but sometimes some lives are given more importance and protectionthan others.For example, the killing of Tamir Rice, a 12 year old boy who was brutally killed by a white cop because he was carrying a pellet gun that looked like a real gun, was a horrific injustice.Many believe that if Tamir Rice had been white, he’d been treated differently and, more importantly be alive. “A black person is killed extra judicially every 28 hrs. Based on data from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, young Blacks are 4.5 times more likely to be killed by police than any other age or racial group”.(Craven, 2014 Huffington post). Similarly the deplorable and unnecessary killing of Eric Garner by New York City police because he was selling loose cigarettes is evidence of unnecessary roughness. The killing of Eric Garner is just because of racism which has become the most powerful source to discriminate others.Police are not hesitating to use deadly force on black bodies. Often, they are killed in seconds when policemen perceive them as a threat. University of Chicago researchers have found that racial biases have an impact on white cops in their decision-making processes. Police are allowed to use their force if they have a valid reason but this does not mean they can go around shooting anyone they feel a little nervous around. Black people are killed every day without appropriate justification just because of racial discrimination. Although everyone knows that there is no place for discrimination in our society, black people face a lot of inequity throughout the country. “Police are 21 times more likely to shoot black teens than white teens, according to a Pro Publica report” (Gabrielson, Jones, Sagara). They are not treated with equal respect and their viewpoints are often ignored.White people are mostly ignored by white police officers, and black suspects are harassed andthrown into jail because they are pushed into defensive mode where people believe young black men are always up to no good and will steal, kill or harm anyone.The problem is the attitude and behavior which outlines the way being black and male is defined in the United States by whites. There are a lot of examples which prove that African Americans suffer from racial discrimination more than other races. Due to the incidents mentioned above and countless more, the Black Lives matter movement emerged. The movement has the right to express their concerns. The members of the movement protest when they see a black being person treated unfairly. They protest in many ways. One of the ways is by blocking highways and roads in order to stir up awareness for their platform. Drivers can spare several minutes of inconvenience if murdered black people can spare their remaining time on earth. According to Deetz et al, “The New Civil Rights Movement” launched with Black lives matter campaigns and has drawn international attention to our long and shameful history of racism and violence in the United States. This sesquicentennial provided a revived platform for the “perfect storm” to discuss issues of race and repair” (pg#3). Black people are raising their voice against police brutality because they seem powerless as everyday a lot of innocent people are killed at the hand of police because of racial bigotry. A group of BLM protesters are now heading toward colleges raising their voices to increase the awareness of the racially biased thing taught in class. For instance, Many African American students are described as aggressive, unfriendly and argumentative even though they only use their words to overcome these problems. They are protesting in different college campuses across the country because this is the only way to tackle the inequalities and discrimination against them. For example, students of Dartmouth College used freedom of speech to support this movement by getting a course added to the department of geography and African-American studies for considering inequality, racism and brutality. Also, at Brown University, students join groups at other campuses protesting against racism. They shared their personal opinions and thoughts to support the Black Lives Matter movement. Free speech still needs more protection. Some opponents of Black lives matter movement claim that it is a murder movement, terrorist group or hate group. “Suddenly, Fox News pundits are talking as if Black Lives Matter is responsible for a recent shooting of a police officer in Texas and Fox News host Bill O’Reilly this week called for Black Lives Matter to be labeled a “hate group.”(Danielle Belton, 2015). They are against the Black live matter movement because they do not feel the pain of discrimination which black people face more than any other group. They never try to understand the problem because it is not affecting them individually, so they think it is not a real problem. Moreover, black lives activists are just using their voicesas a defense, which is legal and there is no evidence for anyone killing a police officer. They are only using their freedom of speech to get their rights which are being denied because of racism. This is a group ready to a centuries of people hating them. They are reacting in a more civilized way. Black Lives Matter does not mean that another races has no value instead it mean the life of black which are treated as a minority mostly by white should be free from discrimination. Black Lives Matter, which is challenging that Democrats openly pursue changes to the criminal justice system and brutality cases, has affected the 2016 presidential candidates multiple times. And now the movement has taken a powerful role in the 2016 election. It is forcing presidential candidates to deal with racial inequality and police brutality which African American’s suffers. The activists have interrupted multiple presidential candidate while candidates are giving protesting for racial equality interrupt the Bernie Sander speech as a protest. The first instance happened to Bernie Sanders. Many republicans and democrats questioned that why they would interrupt to Bernie Sander who has always been in the support of civil right .The movement is doing this to everyone, whether they have supported in the past or not. The most common way is through verbal communication. However the behavior of some while experiencing themselves is not always appropriate. They are not discriminating against anyone. They are doing their agenda BLM to everyone whether or not they have supported civil rights in the past or present. The issue of civil rights need to be addressed and different measures must be taken now. When this happened, some people were outraged because he had been a civil rights advocate and some people saw it as inappropriate conduct while a senator was giving a speech but the movement their tactic worked after this happened every single democratic nominee that’s running for president in 2016 added information about how they would handle the issue on their platforms. It did raise awareness. After that interruption every democratic candidate addressed the issue of racial inequality in their platform. People are looking to get a good deal from their favorite shop on Black Friday, but they are amazed when they see the activists of Black Lives Matter have blocking entrance to upscale shops.
They want people’s attention and they want people to pay concentration on police brutality rather than toshopping. Hundreds of protesters blocked store entrances and shut down traffic in Chicago's ritziest shopping district on Black Friday to draw attention to the 2014 police killing of a black teenager who was shot 16 times by a white officer. (Sara Burnett). They blocked the intersection and stoppedtraffic to express their anger overthe shooting of an innocentblack teenager by a white officer.They blocked the entrance of different stores because shopping is not necessarily as important as their concern over the killing of the people around the country by police. The protesters are carrying the pictures of black men who were brutally killed by police and they were asking to end such
killing.
Today I will be discussing about an African American activist a minister a civil rights leader whom has made many contributions to the African American culture Rev. Al Sharpton. Who was born Alfred Charles Sharpton, Jr. Al Sharpton was born in Brooklyn, NY to his father Alfred Sharpton Sr. and his mother Ada Richards when his family moved he was then raised in Queens, NY. In 1954 He soon began to start developing a speaking style as a child he then started preached his first sermon at the age of four called, “Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled” at Washington Temple Church of God with an audience of over 800 people. Soon after that he then toured with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson who took interested in his unique speaking skills. At the age of 7 Al Sharpton first heard of the struggles with racial issues through the stories that his grandfather would tell him of how he was beaten by white men for simply standing in there way and not walking on the other side of the street.
What is theology? The word “theology” comes from two Greek words that combined mean “the study of God. There are more than 20 types of theologies. Black liberation started the American struggles of the 1960’s. In liberation theology there are 2 groups, the oppressed and the oppressor. The poor are the oppressed and the rich are their oppressors. This kind of theology contextualizes Christianity in an attempt to help those of African descent overcome oppression. This paper will focus on Black Liberation Theology and will explain how it discovers God and how the Biblical God inspire the prophetic work of black liberation theology.
Today there are many controversial subjects discussed throughout the media. One of the most discussed is race and the Black Lives Matter movement. Recently, I came across an article titled “The Truth of ‘Black Lives Matter’”, written by The Editorial Board. The article was published on September 3, 2015, to the New York Times. In the article, The Editorial Board writes about what they believe African Americans are facing as challenges in society today, including the all-too-common police killings of unarmed African-Americans across the country. The Editorial Board is right that some African Americans have been treated unfairly, but all ethnicities have been. Life is a precious thing that comprises all ethnicities. This brings us to ask; why
This paper was written to discuss the hot button topic, “Black Lives Matter.” Specifically, in regard to law enforcement. This has been an ongoing and controversial issue ever since the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of Trayvon Martin. This is when the movement “Black Lives Matter,” was born, with the belief that blacks are treated unfairly by law enforcement. I, however, do not believe that blacks are treated any more unfairly by law enforcement than any other race.
The Black Lives Matter campaign is a major movement in the United States. The campaign started because of the police brutality that occurred against African Americans across the nation. The African American community began this activist movement in order to raise awareness of the mistreatment of African Americans by the police. Furthermore, the campaign strives to solve the issues of racial profiling and injustice in the United States’ criminal society. The first demonstration of the Black Lives Matter campaign occurred after the Trayvon Martin case. Trayvon Martin, a young African American teenager, was shot and killed by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman for no apparent reason. Despite this, George Zimmerman’s trial was acquitted. Following this unjust sanction, protestors coined the hashtag “blacklivesmatter” on social media and began public demonstrations to show their anger toward the criminal justice system.
In 2015, the headlines of most newspapers and magazines have been about civil rights controversies and concerns. A prominent organization affiliated with these civil rights issues is Black Lives Matter. Also known as BLM, Black Lives Matter was founded in the summer of 2013 and stimulated by the shooting of a black suspect, Trayvon Martin, by a white neighborhood watch, George Zimmerman. BLM uses social media to campaign against violence toward African-Americans. Protests are frequently arranged around inequality, racial profiling, and the killings of black people by law enforcement by the United States criminal justice system. This movement is inspired by the African-American civil rights movement which was created to end racial segregation
Most of us have been taught that we always need to be on our best behavior and try to understand and value different views. I am going to exercise my right to protest by refusing to understand why some of my fellow classmates, sharing a classroom with me because just like me they are on a quest for knowledge, find it difficult to grasp the concept of Black Lives matter. Stop saying all lives matter. We already know that. Black Lives Matter is not an anti-white slogan meant to suggest that other lives do not matter, especially white lives. It is a movement to address the racial disparities practiced by law enforcement agencies throughout our nation. For anyone to say all lives matter is to be willfully ignorant and deny the existence of racism,
Black history month is mainly a month that promotes racism among society. In nineteen seventy-six, America names February as black history month, as a commemoration of significant events and individuals of the African-American ancestry. Even though, black history month started as an innocent idea and if the American government would have rejected it, there would have been a colossal backlash across the black community. However, if one would take a step back and look at the big picture, one would notice that black history is American history, shows that not all ethnic groups is treated equally and brings a past time up that pours salt in old wounds. Under those circumstances, there should not be a black history month in the United States
Social movement is a key driver of social change. Social movement can be defined as groups of individuals or organizations that have a main focus on political or social issues. The movements build off of a collective behavior to promote a particular idea that is to be implemented on a society wide scale. The Civil Rights movement is perhaps the most well-known social movement occurring in the 1960s. Its success led to the creation of many more social movements that used similar tactics to push their ideas.
The United States rests upon a foundation of freedom, where its citizens can enjoy many civil liberties as the result of decades of colonial struggles. However, African Americans did not achieve freedom concurrently with whites, revealing a contradiction within the “nation of liberty”. It has been stated that "For whites, freedom, no matter how defined, was a given, a birthright to be defended. For African Americans, it was an open-ended process, a transformation of every aspect of their lives and of the society and culture that had sustained slavery in the first place." African Americans gained freedom through the changing economic nature of slavery and historical events like the Haitian Revolution policies, whereas whites received freedom
The Transformation of the American Society was drastically effected by the Civil Rights movement and the antiwar movements that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s. These movements gained momentum quickly as public sentiment saw the everlasting war in Vietnam and the domestic violence within the country as unneccessary.
The Civil Right Movement gave equality to black people. This changed the way they were treated specially in the south. Many people have heard about this movement, but there is only a few amount of people that actually know what it really is. The civil Rights Movement was a struggle to achieve equal opportunity in employment, housing, education, public, facilities, and even having the right to vote (Civil Rights Movement) This equal opportunity was specially for African Americans. “The Civil Rights Movement is important for the rapid advancement of blacks that gained during a relatively short period of time, but also significant are the lasting changes it affected in American political processes, legal theories and government policies.” (Winter, 12) The Civil Rights Movement of 1950’s and 1960’s has been one of the most critical periods in the U.S. by intensive protest. (The Civil Rights Movement)
After writing my newspaper article on the NAACP, I realized that the African American community needed a renewed sense of belonging, like all the other communities have in this day in age. This sense of being is better known as equality. Webster’s dictionary defines equality as having the same rights, social status and opportunities as others. The African American community has yet to reach a plateau were they are seen as equals. Equalities for African Americans are still a foreign subject, but hopefully will progress in the future.
According to Navarrete, McDonald, Molina, & Sidanius (2010), race refers to a group of people who exhibit similar physical and genetic characteristics that are different from other groups. He also refers to race as social constructs. Racism, however, is defined as the belief that one’s own race is superior over other people’s races (Cote-Lussier, 2016). On the other hand, racial stereotyping may be defined as the blanket assumption that every member of a particular racial group behave and act in a certain predefined way irrespective of their individual unique differences (Wong, Horn, & Chen, 2013; Graham & Lowery, 2004). The two terms, though, are mistakenly interchangeably used in most racial studies. According to Inzlicht & Kang (2010), numerous scholars and researchers have done a number of researches on race, racism, and racial stereotyping. A lot of the research that has been done in this field, though, has mainly
It is important to realize that even though it is the 21st century, United States of America is not a post-racial society. A post-racial society is considered to be “a society free from racial prejudice, discrimination, and oppression” (Adams et al., 57). The reason I state that it is not post-racial is because racism, discrimination, prejudices, and oppression occurs every day. Although racism and discrimination does not have as much public support as it once did, it is still evident. Since there is not as much public tolerance for either issues, people may hide their racist or discriminatory beliefs. Also, discrimination and racism is not as candid as it once was on mass media, but there are still subtle hints of both.