Why Are We in a Race War Right Now?
It is undeniable that the issue of race-relations is one of the most prominent in today’s society and we are immersed in what many intellectuals are calling another Civil War. This issue has ignited national debates over police violence and systemic racism in the wake of the shootings of…
Trayvon Martin February 26, 2012
Eric Garner July 17, 2014
Michael Brown August 9, 2014
Tamir Rice November 22, 2014
Walter Scott April 4, 2015 Alton Sterling July 5, 2016
Philando Castile July 6, 2016
Terence Crutcher September 16, 2016
Keith Lamont Scott September 20, 2016
Alfred Olango September 30, 2016
Do Black Lives Matter?
Protesters have grown weary of the seemingly countless black lives that have been added and added to the list, as the initially peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in response to the most recent killings of Terence Crutcher, Keith Lamont Scott and Alfred Olango have ended in a states of chaos, violence, and confusion. Each of these killings sparked protests in their respective states, where peaceful protests grew violent. In Oklahoma, dozens of protestors and officers were injured as police dressed in riot gear and used tear gas to disperse the violent crowd, causing Oklahoma to declare a state of emergency, while in Los Angeles, protesters demanded the police to release video evidence hurled rocks and bricks at police over the issue of “transparency.”
Demands for reform have been made by Black Lives matter and the simpler ones have easily been met, such as use of body cameras by officers or recording all stops made by the police for data on the race and ethnicity of those stopped. But these killings are occurring again and again and the violence is only escalating, as each new news report adds fuel to the already-burning fire.
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement has emerged out of the outrage over the implicit bias in policing with these racial shootings and bringing awareness to the lack of consequences when black lives are taken at the hands of police.
The BLM movement seeks to combat the long-standing issues of: 1. Lack of racial information on police-initiate traffic stops the disproportionally high percentage of police killings of black civilians (about 40 percent of all incidents in 2013)
2. A near-zero conviction rate of police officers accused of illegally shooting civilians
3. Racial bias in selection of grand juries, among others.
“Because of the brutalizing and killing of black people at the hands of police and the indifference of society in general and the criminal justice system in particular. It is important that we say: Black Lives Matter” – Patricia Leary. According to Darnell Moore, Senior Editor and Correspondent of MicNews - this movement is not intended to say black lives matter more than anyone else’s, but rather, that black lives SHOULD matter. Because of the history of institutional racism, the black community is much more likely to be targeted by the police. The phrase “Black Lives Matter” is representative of the systematic marginalization of the black community. It is the job of police to protect and serve ALL communities, however, the way that our justice system, media, and police have been operating, suggests that they do not.
Conflicting Narrative of the Race War
Police violence has become a national issue and with each new name being used as a trending #BlackLivesMatter hashtag on twitter, this only fuels the ever-changing and conflicting narratives across the country and further deepening the already-prevalent divide.
#AllLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter are the hashtags that have emerged in response to the Black Lives Matter protests. According to John Halstead of The Huffington Post, - this hashtag is most commonly used by white individuals saying that singling out Black people’s lives as mattering somehow means that white lives don’t matter. However, these hashtags are a problem because they refocus the issue away from systemic racism and marginalized communities. “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter” distracts and diminishes the message that black lives should matter more than they do.
The Danger of the Single Narrative as it relates to the race war
The way we consume news and social media often provides a one-sided perspective that makes it difficult to gain the true reality of a story because it is being seen through a specific lens that only portrays the definitive black and white areas, and not so much the gray. And because we are not engaging and accessing one another to understand these different narratives and stories about how we are experiencing these things, we are only acting upon the dangers of the single narrative.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie delves in to the danger best. “There is danger that comes with accepting single narratives and only seeing one part of this very large issue. When individuals only see a small part of the whole, we become immersed and ignorant with what we perceive because a majority of the story is not being represented and it is therefore, incomplete. And then we must deal with its unintended consequence: it becomes impossible to see things as anything else. To have the ability to tell the story of another person, is to make it the definitive story of that person. This single narrative flattens experiences and creates stereotypes. It makes the recognition of our equal humanity different and emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar. So we must reject the single narrative and embrace all accounts in order empower and humanize. We must gain a full understanding and complete the story.”
https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=tedspread
Is there a solution?














