For 4/30/19 Making All Black Lives Matter #1

I had never heard of Barbara Ransby or her book, “Making All Black Lives MAtter,” until taking this class. And now having fully read it, I can say that I feel it is a book that everyone should read. I rarely get to read books that dive into intersectional issues while still offering relevant information regarding the topics at large. I found it particularly interesting when Ransby was discussing what it means to be represented versus what it means to be casted out. Ransby draws connections between racial aggression, and over- policing to name a few. In terms of representation, I enjoyed the discussion the class had when discussing what sparked the Black Lives Matter movement. I had sided with the carceral state option originally. It is a known fact that there are disproportionate numbers showing how widely targeted black men are when it comes to being convicted. However, upon further class discussion the question of how much representation and visibility did Barack Obama really give the black community, came up. At first this question confused me because when Obama first came into office I was only 8 years old. However, now that I am a somewhat adult, I can say that looking back it seems as though the U.S. got a black president before the country was actually ready for one. This is why, politically, there were many more barriers that stood in Obama’s way to be an effective leader while still embracing who he was and where he came from. Instead, he had a system of checks and balances overseen by those who weren’t his biggest fan that acted as guards for what he could and could not do. Obama already had the odds stacked against him because of his skin color. If he was any darker, he would not have won the presidency. And that alone is a problem in and of itself.

Comments

  1. Adam MorrisMay 6, 2019 at 4:06 PM

    I agree with all of Nate's points that were made in this post. I think that this book should be in the curriculum of history courses in schools. The majority of news about racial profiling and police brutality is involving African American men. I think that this topic of African Americans being incarcerated way more often then any other human, is something that needs to be looked in to. The government needs to realize how unjust the system really is. For example, we discussed in class that cocaine is considered more of a white man drug, while crack is considered more for black people. But yet, the same amount of prison time is spent if someone is caught with an insane amount of cocaine, and just a little bit of crack. That itself should just make them realize the problem. I also think that this may relate to another discussion we have had in class about African American men, I think that they are still seen as "beasts" that are superior to any other human in some people's eyes. This obviously may not be the correct or main reason for these incidents to be happening, but I do think that it may have something to do with the problem at hand. I agree with Nate about Barrack Obama as well. I was also very young and not educated about the racial society we live in today. But now that I have learned about the issues the world deals with, I can say that I believe that Barrack Obama was put in to office before the country was ready for an African American man to lead it. There were certainly barriers for him to have to attempt to get passed for him to make a change on this problem, and it just was not possible for him to do it, given the circumstances. And there were most likely people who acted as guards that said what he could and could not do, like Nate mentioned. Overall, I agree with Nate's comments on this book and think that it was a very interesting read.

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