Black Lives Matter Misconceptions

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Starting in 2013 as a hashtag on twitter following the fatal shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin a movement known as Black Lives Matter began. It aims to inform the world of the goals to end police brutality and social injustice against black individuals. The movement has recently grown stronger due to the deaths of innocent and unarmed black people such as Eric Gardner, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling and many more. Although the movement, some might think is self-explanatory, there are many misconceptions surrounding it. My goal for this paper is to clarify some misconceptions about the movement such as that the movement doesn’t have a real purpose, that all lives don’t matter, or that it doesn’t care about black-on-black crime. Some …show more content…
They know that it is a big issue among the black communities and it is not ignored. For example, “In Chicago, long maligned for its high rates of intraracial murder, members of the community created the Violence Interrupters” (1). The goals of the Violence Interrupters are to stop violence altercations before they get a chance to escalate (1). So why do people still bring up black on black crime as if the black community is blatantly ignoring it? Well it is still bought up because some may feel like black people don’t have a right to speak on police brutality and the injustices brought upon the black community just because the majority of their killing is within their own race. “However, those who insist on talking about black-on-black crime frequently fail to acknowledge that most crime intraracial” (1). In other words, the same people who keeps bringing up that black on black crime is a problem most likely isn’t talking about how most crimes happen within the same race. So why is it a problem when it comes to black people and not as big of a problem when it comes to other …show more content…
The movement has many purposes that include fighting for equality, ending police brutality, and even challenging the while privileges and supremacy. Black Lives Matter is not an indication that all lives don’t matter because of course all lives matter. It just needs to be enforced that black lives matters as well. Black on black crime is understood within the black community. The movement understands that it is a problem, but bringing it up constantly seems like a way to tell black people that they have no right to speak on the brutality just because there is intraracial killing. Today the black lives matter movement has come far despite the misconceptions that people inflict upon it but hopefully people will understand what the movement is really about and come to accept and support

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