The Power of Black Lives Matter
The Power of Black Lives Matter
In his writing “The Power of Black Lives Matter,” Darryl Lorenzo Wellington shares his personal believes and views on the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement. He opens this essay to state that in the past recent years we as Americans have experiences two often reoccurring themes in today’s world, views on the issue are coming up more often in conversation and issues related to this matter are now being faced with a whole new set of views and emotions. These two being that both class and race have pretty much been a distant thought, often times completely forgotten about, until a public tragedy happens and we bring them into play; as if we have nothing else to point fingers towards. Needless to say, both class and race do both matter greatly in these types of issues. But going into much greater detail, he strips down and analyzes these two issues to investigate a greater understanding for them; class affecting the chances in life than an individual is given, and race categorizing an individual at certain levels amongst people in the American nation. With both of these themes to keep accounted for, Wellington emphasizes that these concepts shouldn’t exist in this modern era in which we live in, unfortunately that is the case.
On further discussion on how class affects us, there are a couple of national outburst that brought attention to the reality of class. A more modern instance in today’s society is the housing mortgage crisis, this issue has been a true wake up call to the true difference in class. The middle class of people saw where the line was drawn between the upper class and themselves. Wellington states “We are the 99 percent” was the iconic phrase amongst people during the Occupy movement. Indeed, the occupiers were in fact the majority of the state’s economic process, it kept many strong and connected to one another thought the fact that they were all in the same exact class in a sense. There was a crack in the marginal 99 percent however, something that kept everyone from reaching true unity; Race. Even thought those 99 percent were at the bottom, who exactly was at the bottom of the bottom? That's right, Black Americans. Wellington suggest, that our question on race in not exactly about how race can fall within the matter of having a black president, but rather how a nation something like that happen can still ignore and brush off the hundreds of other black American life issues. When we analyze these life issues and discrimination conflicts against black Americans, it just so happens to be more of a problem with race rather than class.
The Black Lives Matter movement is fueled mostly by the young black people of America, they looked to see the system more than just the class flaw, but other what they saw was the racial oppression and trendies that really struck the core of why this movement exist. In connections to the law, many of the police controlled deaths and events of police brutality began being dismissed and gone without some sort of punishment. The more often these outbreaks occurred, as did the growth of national outcry.
Wellington writes a specific section of this article on what he referred to “Facebook Activism” which, as Wellington writes, “was often criticized for being an idle millennial-generation pastime.” With the help of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many others, protesters are able to amplify their voices and opinions to the masses. Wellington explains that “The phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ is often used as a convenient banner encompassing the groups that responded to recent events by disseminate protest— both online and in the streets.” The recoil to the systematic racism that has caused the effect of Black Lives Matter to form wouldn't exactly be as widespread and known about by the world if it wasn't for the radical activism of social groups on Facebook to make these issues go globally viral. Cover photo banners and public protest event pages were some of the many tactics to what spread the word on many current events and issues that have recently occurred amongst the black