4/30

I enjoyed reading the beginning chapters of Barbara Ransby's Making All Black Lives Matter because of the understanding and exposure that I have had to the information talked about. Honestly, it has to be nearly impossible for anyone to not have encountered the Black Lives Matter movement in some sort of way. With all of the social media platforms that are out there and the other news coverage outlets everyone has seen or at least heard of the movement. It is also almost impossible to not see the evidence of police abusing their power and brutalizing people, most evidently young black males. This brutality though, is not always seen as it is. Some people today just see these acts of brutality as the police simply doing their jobs. I believe that nonlethal force is needed in some cases to make arrests and sometimes even lethal force, but in the cases that we see like Trayvon Martin, the fact that that can be seen as anything other than murder is beyond me. Martin was an unarmed, 17 year old African American boy who was "threatening" enough to a “white” man with a gun, George Zimmerman, that the officer shot and killed him. Zimmerman was initially not going to be charged. This just shows that some people with a badge believe they are above the law, and can abuse their power. I believe this is still a big problem today and needs to be taken care of. The institutional racism of the judicial system from judges down to police officers has black people living in fear, thus taking one of the essential human rights away from a group of people.

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