There are a lot of citizens in the United States that think that the black community is creating a racial war just for attention. Many of those who oppose the #BlackLivesMatter movement, or rather the reason behind it, don’t think that the racism experienced by the black community is real. Many of those who have the luxury of white privilege deny its existence and believe that blacks are simply crying wolf and pulling the race card because it is the only defense they have. I can’t tell you how many times I have been in discussion with people who have spoken like this, and as a young, black woman who has experienced everything that we “preach” about, it is truly heartbreaking.
I would love to ask those who don’t believe in the movement if they have ever woken up and felt like they didn’t want to live in their nation anymore because it was so unsafe for people who shared the same skin color as you? Have you ever felt so helpless because you knew that if you left your home nation, anywhere else you would go wouldn’t be much different? Have you ever walked into a store and been followed by employees who are trying to make sure you don’t steal? Have people walked past you and clutched their belongings to their chests? Have people stared at you on a plane like you were going to kill them all? Do you know how it feels to be in another country and instantly become afraid when you see police walking in your general direction, only to be smiled at and walked past? What does that say about what is going on at home?
There has been a lot of debate in the media over the police brutality against people of color, and more specifically black people, and whether or not it is as big a deal as people are making it out to be. There was even one point where articles surfaced that police officers are being taught in the academy that there is a war on police. Since these articles, numerous studies and statistics have been released to show that police killings are at a record low.
Another article that came out recently that I read a couple days ago talks about how “Police Killings Surpass the Worst Years of Lynching, Capital Punishment, and a Movement Responds.” The argument of this article is completely compelling and utterly terrifying. Will people of color ever be safe in America to pursue the life, liberty, and happiness that is talked about in the constitution, or was that just written for the white people considered as human beings at the time?
The article above gives number statistics to this issue on our hands now. It tells how there have been, this year alone, 957 police killings to the date of Oct.31. It then puts this into perspective by comparing police killings of other large nations: “This is a level of police violence that is simply unimaginable in other wealthy democratic country; in Germany in 2012, a total of seven people were killed by the police, and in England a single person was killed in 2013 and 2014 combined. And Japan, a nation of 126 million people that is as non-violent as the US is violent, had no police killings over the past two years.” It also says how African-Americans represent one-quarter of those killings, which is basically double what our total population represents in this nation. This article also goes in-depth into the mass incarceration of blacks, something that has been proven before where blacks represent 65 percent of the total prison population.
With these kinds of numbers and evidence, not to mention the individual testimonies of the discrimination and prejudice experienced by people of color daily, people really need to begin asking themselves: how real is the racial injustice in America today?
