For the past few years there has been an excessive amount of lives lost due to police brutality. These violent acts have been going on for years, but ever since the Trayvon Martin shooting, people began taking this a lot more seriously.
Their concern started the Black Lives Matter movement. The Black Lives Matter movement serves to bring awareness to the black community, and to stop the violence towards people of color. The movement wants every one of all different ethnicities to be treated as equals, rather than being harshly sentenced, hurt, or misjudged based on how they look. Unfortunately, many people still do not understand the purpose of it.
At Bridgewater State University, there has been a lot of conversation about the Black Lives Matter movement. In the Fall of 2015, a group of students received permission to put up pro black lives matter signs on the underpass on campus, to promote and bring awareness to the cause, but it got negative feedback.
The signs put up said “White Silence is Violence,” and “Support Black Lives Matter” but many people took offense to it. They crossed out the word Black and replaced it with All Lives Matter. They also went on to pull down posters of Black Lives Matter. One female student stated that people of color want to make it all about them, when there truly is not a major problem. They go on to say that “White Silence is Violence,” is extremely offensive because they feel targeted and feel like that they are prejudice for targeting white people.
She also says that white people are going through struggles are also being stereotyped as being pedophiles or whores. She believes that we should focus on everyone as a whole and not blame white people like herself, when they are also have their struggles to.
Many people on this campus believe that the movement is unnecessary and that all lives should be put into consideration rather than focusing on one. Another anonymous student on this campus took another stance towards the cause to say he supports the movement.
He stated that “Although all lives are important, we are focusing on African Americans because we have been facing injustice for years.” He goes on to say “Those who do not take the time to understand the movement will be against it, but if you understand that we are preventing deaths predominantly in our race, you would support it.”
“We are starting a movement to stop the stereotypes, and prevent unnecessary deaths because we look 'dangerous'. It's 2016; this should not be happening.”
All this conversation caused a series of events in February to help others understand what the movement is all about. This was a meeting held on campus in the Rondileau Campus Center where everyone was welcome to get the latest information on the cause. To my surprise, the room was filled with people of all different ethnicities. It was a mixed variety of people all coming together to support the cause. After everyone settled in, they showcased a TED talk showing an African American woman named Verna Myers who talked about bias’s and black excellence.
She went into detail about how we all have a bias and how everyone judges based on how they look or who they are. She explained her bias she has based on different genders, and her own bias against her own race. She admitted to having a bias and helped the audience understand that we are not targeting white people when we have the problem ourselves; she is trying to stop the bias one by one.
She also explained that even those who agree there is a problem, also have to try to stop the problem. “The reason why these bias are continuing on and on is because we do not inform our children that being racist is wrong, and fail to tell them that certain comments are not okay,” she says. “When our families are making certain racist comments we have to be the ones that say it is not okay.”
After hearing her empowering TED talk speech, the leader of the program that night said to form different groups, and to be respectful of other people’s opinions. In our groups, there were people of all races coming together to solve the problem, and everyone seemed to agree that Black Lives Matter is important.
A young woman in the group does believe that white people should speak up to support them, because she is aware that she has privilege based on her skin color, and she will use that to support the cause. She went on to say that many people do not speak out about it because they do not want to be put down, or ridiculed because they do not understand something. “I will never truly understand black struggle, but I will do my best to understand and support them,” she says.
Although everyone at this meeting is trying to support the movement, the Black Lives Matter movement is still not understood on campus completely. It is great that many people support the movement, and are trying to help but it is the people who are not supporting it, that we need to convince to change the system.
