Before we begin, I’d like to be clear—this nation has always been divided. There has always been a significant divide between white people and minorities in America. This isn’t some new revelation that occurred only in the past week. However, for many people, this is the beginning of notably significant changes.
In this past week, several unarmed African Americans were murdered by police. Most notable were the two murders of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, MN, and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, LA. These two attacks in particular stirred up controversy due to the fact that both their murders were recorded on video.
Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, streamed the aftermath of the shooting onto Facebook Live. He had evidently informed the officer of a registered firearm in his car and was reaching for his license and registration when the officer opened fire.
Sterling was being detained and arrested while in possession of an unlicensed fire arm. He was pinned to the ground when an officer shot him. The officers reported him reaching for a fire arm, though the video contradicts this statement. A civil rights investigation has been opened by the Justice Department following the release of the video.
Following the first shooting in Baton Rouge, several protests sprung up but were mostly peaceful. After Castile’s murder, protests grew but still remained peaceful. However, in Dallas, the peace ended when a lone unaffiliated gunman murdered five police officers at a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest. The Black Lives Matter movement has denounced him and his use of violence. The gunman was killed in a standoff with law enforcement.
Since then, a divide has sprung up across America, with people feeling the need to declare whether they fall on the side of “Blue Lives Matter” or “Black Lives Matter.” The New York Post declared “civil war” on their front page and the Drudge Report rebranded this movement as “Black Lives Kill.”
A police officer in Overland Park, Kansas, was fired after writing “We’ll see how much her life matters soon. Better be careful leaving your info open where she can be found : ) Hold her close tonight it’ll be the last time,” on a Facebook photo of LaNaydra Williams’ young daughter.
A former Republican congressman, Joe Walsh, wrote on his Twitter following the Dallas shootings “This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you.”
We are split and we, as a nation, have reached a tipping point. In 2015, unarmed black people were killed at five times the rate of unarmed white people. Only two of these alleged 102 shootings resulted in convictions of the police officers. Nothing has changed from last year to this one, and the video of not one, but two of these incidents in the same week in 2016 has once again brought this issue to a tipping point, though it was handled with relative peace until the Dallas shootings.
There are now literal calls for war and death threats being hurled at African Americans. Many are following the New York Post’s line of thought—we’re heading towards another Civil War.
