Usually, I'm not the type of person to share my political and societal beliefs with other people unless I am directly asked about them. I have my beliefs and principles, but I do not think it is my place to try and force my beliefs on other people, usually because I admittedly don't know all the information. I'm also NOT knocking people that do choose to share their stances. They absolutely have the right to discuss their opinions. I just prefer to be more reserved.

That being said, I can no longer remain silent on one particular issue because silence seems to be part of the problem. The issue I am referring to is the increase of police shootings of unarmed black men.

A few years ago, when this issue was first brought to light, I was skeptical that there was a problem. I could not fathom that black men were being killed because of some kind of "subconscious" racism by some police officers. I found it difficult to accept that something so awful could be so ingrained in our society. However, I admit that I am a white man, so I cannot possibly understand what it may be like for someone of a different skin color, so, for the sake of understanding the perspectives of others and in uncovering the truth, I researched the issue and decided to come to my own conclusions. Whenever a shooting would happen, I'd watch any videos of the incident available, read witness reports, and look at the facts.

In this venture, I discovered quite a few things. First of all, every shooting MUST be looked at separately. All of them have different details and facts that make each case unique. For example, in some of them, the victim would make a quick move towards their pockets or attempt to grab something. In instances like this, the blame cannot be placed on the police officer. As tragic as a scenario like this is, an officer does not have time to wait and see what the suspect may grab. The officer's life is in danger. Because of happenings like this, it is unfair to say that an unarmed man was shot, and the cry foul afterwards.

That being said, I do believe that there is a problem. One of the first questions I asked is, "Why does it seem that this only seems to happen to black men?". So I looked for specific instances of unarmed white men who were shot by police. While I found a few instances, there were not many. There are more white people in the country than African-Americans, so these incidents disproportionately affect African-Americans. I also considered a potential media bias, at least in the sense that the media only reports the shootings of unarmed black men. However, in what I have found, there simply seems to be more instances of blacks being shot than whites.

Another question I had was, "Why now? Why do so many of these types of shootings seem to be happening now?". The answer I've come up with is the rise of social media and camera phones. There is simply more opportunity for these types of occurrences to become visible to the public. It's possible that this has been happening for a long time, but we are only aware of the issue now.

Because of all these questions and answers, I believe that the Black Lives Matter movement has a strong point to make. However, their message seems to have been distorted by many. They are not drawing the line between whites and blacks. The word "only" should not be inserted before "Black Lives Matter." That is not their message. They are simply calling for some sort of reform to protect people from being killed.

Now I know a lot of police officers, so I am in no way indicting every single member of the police force. In fact, I am only talking about a very VERY small minority of the police. Police officers have an extremely difficult job, and I greatly respect them for it. Unfortunately, it is impossible to tell which officers are in that small minority until someone has been shot. It seems like the only way to fix this problem is to change how officers are trained, and that unfortunately looks like we are blaming all police officers, which is absolutely not the case.

I think the reason why this is such a hotbed issue is because of the discomfort people find in the possibility that racism is so prevalent today. People take offense when others say that police officers are racists, which they rightly should. Police officers are not racists. The reason why people get so angry is because too many generalizations and stereotypes are being applied to different social groups. Personally, I believe that ANYTIME someone is shot by a police officer is shot, whether they are black, white, unarmed, or armed, it should be thoroughly investigated, because a loss of life is a tragic occurrence no matter what.

So now I am going to say it publicly for the first time: yes, I am with the Black Lives Matter movement. But I also support and respect all police officers. They do so much good, it would be a shame to let the few taint the many. So yes, the lives of policemen and women matter as well. What I stand for is "justice for all." I hope this issue can someday be resolved, because if not, I fear many MANY future conflicts.